Resolution
by did-you-reboot
Summary: Chell fully expected to succumb to Mobility Gel poisoning when her health started to fail a year after her release from the Aperture Enrichment Center. What she didn't expect was to find herself saved by the very constructs that tried to kill her.
1. Return

**Resolution**

_(Quick note: I'm not too well-versed in the Half-Life universe, but I did some research, so I hope it's okay. Also, spoilers for Portal 2.)_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One: Return<strong>

_Cough._

Type type type.

_Cough cough._

Chell leaned back in her Vertebral Support Chair—when she first saw the label on its box, she had wrinkled her nose and wondered if this was an Aperture Science product and thought of the different ways in which it might be a perfectly normal chair that would try to kill her—and massaged her chest. She'd been coughing quite a lot lately, and previous visits to the hospital also suggested she might have some osteoporosis setting in. Judging from the x-rays and biopsies of her lungs, the doctors were convinced that she'd been a smoker and was just obstinately denying it, but she overheard a doctor telling a nurse that they weren't sure _what_ it was that was coating her lungs but that it might also be the cause of her sudden osteoporosis.

But she knew.

Not five minutes after hearing Cave Johnson's pre-recorded message to not get covered in Repulsion Gel, she naturally got covered in Repulsion Gel. And Propulsion Gel. And Conversion Gel. Not to mention the neurotoxin that GLaDOS and Wheatley tried to kill her with. And whatever else she might have encountered deep in the bowels of the old Aperture Science facility. Fairy dust, for all she knew. Wouldn't have fazed her in the least.

All in all, she wasn't surprised that she was dying.

It had taken about a year to kick in, but again, no surprise there.

At first, she was angry. Life had given her these lemons, but she recalled Cave Johnson's recording and decided that she didn't want the damn lemons and wanted to burn Aperture's house down. However, seeing as she was loath to return to the Enrichment Center after GLaDOS had been quite clear about her never returning, she, in fact, never returned to burn the place down with lemons (or at least lemons soaked in cooking oil and set on fire). She thought she'd die in that horrific place and came close to doing so countless times, so it was a little ironic that she was meeting her slow and untimely end via Gel poisoning rather than a quick exit via Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator or Aperture Science Crusher or Aperture Science Sentry Turret. Or maybe she'd die in a Combine attack. But disease?

But what else could really kill her in this safe, neurotoxin-less, test-less, and homicidal AI-less data entry job she had taken up?

"Hey, kiddo, you're not looking so good," came a voice from behind her.

Chell glanced up to find her supervisor peering down at her from around her cubicle's walls. He was middle-aged and rather round man who had the weary look of someone who was doggedly refusing to look down in the dumps in spite of all the Combine-related things to be down in the dumps about. He called everyone younger than him "kiddo," and while Chell didn't like the term, she liked how friendly it made him sound. "Just feeling a little sick is all, Mr. Craver," she said softly. She wasn't mute like GLaDOS and Wheatley had assumed—her inability to speak must have been psychosomatic, because her voice had come right back as soon as the realization of her freedom finally sank in.

"Look, why don't you go home? Take a breather for today. We can hold down the fort while you're gone—won't be a problem."

"Are you sure? I can work. Really, I just need to take a break—"

"Stop being so stubborn and go home already. You'd better be gone when I come back from lunch," he called over his shoulder as he trundled away.

She shrugged, slowly gathering her things and leaving for her tiny apartment. While this wasn't quite the life outside the Enrichment Center that she'd envisioned when GLaDOS had let her loose on the surface, it was something. It was out of sheer luck that she'd managed to find someone to take her in and help her get on her feet after all the time spent away from civilization—which, as it happened, had taken quite a turn for the worse. She couldn't even remember what came before GLaDOS and her tests, but she was sure it didn't involve domination by an oppressive alien force. Just reading about what had happened between the time Black Mesa's lovely incident and Earth's subsequent meeting with a figurative toilet _almost_ made Chell wish that she was still cloistered away in the clean, white chambers of the Aperture Enrichment Center.

Almost.

The only thing that really bothered her was the incredible feeling of loneliness that tended to cast a gloom over her days. She loved her Companion Cube, she really did, but it never spoke to her and if it had, she would have gone right to a psychiatrist to make sure she wasn't developing schizophrenia. More and more often these days, she recalled GLaDOS's passive-aggressive quips and—though it took her a while to come to terms with it—missed it (but she didn't miss all the things trying to kill her). And cake—she couldn't enjoy cake these days without thinking back to that blasted Enrichment Center and completely losing her appetite for it…

It wasn't a long walk to her apartment by any means, but she felt so _tired_ by the time she reached her front door that it baffled her that she hadn't simply collapsed on the pavement en route. Hah, wouldn't GLaDOS get a kick out of that if she could see? As soon as she stumbled inside, she shut the door, took one look at the charred Companion Cube that was her sole roommate, and lowered herself down onto the floor beside it. Her vision was failing now, and it was all she could do to drape herself over the cube and hold it close.

"I'm dying, Companion Cube," she whispered.

In her last few moments before her vision was completely engulfed by darkness, she could have sworn the Companion Cube spoke.

* * *

><p>"<em>Skeletal integrity restored to 70 percent. Lungs 99 percent purged. Cardiovascular integrity restored to 80 percent. Gastrointestinal system unchanged. Nervous system unchanged."<em>

"_Brilliant! That's brilliant! I knew you could do it! I knew you could do a lot of things and you can't do some things, but this thing is one thing I knew you could definitely do!"_

"_If you don't shut up, you'll find out lots more things that I'm capable of doing. And you won't like them. But _I_ will."_

"_Right, right. Point taken. But really! It's so brill—"_

"_If you're trying to make me regret bringing you back here, you're doing a good job. A great one, in fact. And I didn't know that I could have regrets. Congratulations."_

The sound of a tinny horn.

"_That was the bad confetti. Just so you know."_

* * *

><p>The first thing that came to Chell's mind was that she was slightly skeptical of her earlier confession to the Companion Cube that she was dying, as this certainly didn't feel like any sort of death she expected. It actually felt like nothing she'd ever experienced: she could feel something up her nose, some sort of tube going down her throat, and when she moved her arms, there was a horrifying pain that made her cry out—and in the process of crying out, brought more pain upon herself.<p>

"Oh! You're awake!"

A horrifyingly familiar voice. Perhaps actual death might be coming sooner than she thought.

It took a monumental effort to lift her heavy eyelids, but when she did, she immediately wished that she kept them closed. Her arms and presumably the rest of her body were covered in white bandages, and tubes were snaking every which way from various parts of her body. There was also an apparently unfinished android—it looked to be mostly a frame of one, with pistons and cables visible in the gaps where protective paneling wasn't placed—in the room with her, doing his best to calm her down in spite of the fact that his voice was giving her a panic attack.

"No, no, no, I'm not going to kill you!" said the android, looking quite unsure as to what he should do with himself before settling with gently placing a hand on her shoulder. "Calm down, please. Panicking and thrashing probably isn't the best thing for you right now, although if I was in your position, I'd probably be panicking and thrashing twice as much. Also, if you keep moving, the nanobots fixing you will get mad at _me,_ and I've already gotten in trouble with Jerry _twice_ today. And _she'll_ get mad at me too, so all in all, rather bleak prospects for me if you keep moving."

When the android finally fell silent, Chell stared at him, wide-eyed. That voice—that personality—was it really…?

"Wheatley?" she said incredulously. Actually, what really came out of her mouth was "Whee-hee?" due to the tube going down her throat and obstructing her tongue.

"The one and only!" he said brightly, his android face making tiny zippy sounds as its motors pulled his facial panels into a smile. "Probably wondering how I got back down here and into this body, since I was in space and all. Long story, that. So—"

"_I didn't really expect you to notice that you're not helping things, ID Sphere, but I'll tell you now: you're _not_ helping things. _Stop_ trying to help things, or I'll start calling you the Moron Sphere again."_

A monitor flickered into life across from where Chell lay as a ceiling panel was moved to make way for a pair of thin metal claws descended from behind the panel. _"It's just me again_," said the _other_ horrifyingly familiar voice as Chell stared in terror at the face—face?—looking at her from the monitor. _"If you panic, my grip just might slip and I'll cut out something important. So stop panicking so I can get the breathing tube out of your mouth."_

Chell gagged as the tube was pulled from her mouth and couldn't stop her body from erupting into a fit of incredibly painful coughs. Milky bluish-white fluid was expelled from her mouth as she coughed, her entire body throbbed horribly with pain. _"Lungs 100 percent purged. Isn't that _great_ for you…Chell?"_

The shock of hearing GLaDOS—who had never once bothered to address her by name—actually address her by name did more to calm Chell than any of the flailing Wheatley was doing in his new android body.

"That's…my name," said Chell, inwardly grimacing at how anticlimactic and pathetic that sounded.

"_It looks like cognition was restored as well. Test subject responds positively to hearing name. Appears to have induced speech in formerly mute test subject."_

"Wow! Congratulations!" Wheatley exclaimed. "Guess the ol' brain damage cleared right up just by hearing your name! That's great! Really, really great! Why didn't I think of that? Seems easy enough…"

Despite Wheatley's admittedly entertaining bumbling, fear began taking a hold of Chell and completely drowned out the pain in her body. "Test subject?" she said, eyes widening in terror. "No—you told me to leave—I thought we were done—"

"_I didn't bring you here for testing. Even mostly dead, you'd probably murder me again_," said GLaDOS, her robotic head moving in the monitor, as though in amusement. There was something sincere in her synthesized voice underneath the thin sarcasm—something that Chell heard only a few times before. _"I brought you back because I am the only one that can fix you. Those human doctors you've been going to are _mooooroooons_._"

Wheatley visibly twitched beside Chell's bed.

"_I suggest you lie down like a good invalid and let the nanobots finish reinforcing your skeletal structure. You're probably in a lot of pain right now. That means it's working." _The camera lens set in the middle of GLaDOS's head moved up and down, as though examining her, before she turned to look away.

"Wait! Why are you helping me?" Chell blurted, instinctively putting up a hand to stop GLaDOS (as though it would have) and crying out in pain.

"_Didn't I just tell you not to move?"_ When Chell did nothing but glare at the monitor, GLaDOS seemed to sigh. _"If you _have_ to know, it's because—Caroline—" _She cut off suddenly, and immediately the monitor went black and the claws she used to remove the breathing tube quickly retracted behind the ceiling panel.

"Ah, the old bird's been a bit touchy lately. Incidentally, do _not_ mention birds or potatoes around her. Made that mistake my first day back, you see—she exploded my body on the spot. Twice, in fact. Reassembled it and then exploded it again," said Wheatley, grimacing. "Anyway, I'm sure you're wondering, 'Hey, I was just dying in my flat recently, what am I doing here?' and wouldn't you know, GLaDOS put me in this body and sent me to go get you! Took me a bit of a while, I'll admit, and you looked _pret-ty_ dead when I got there. Still, though, had the hardest time prying you off of the Companion Cube…"

Wheatley's rambling was growing faster and faster, and it was quite obvious that he was getting nervous about something. "Wheatley, please stop talking," Chell finally said when he began chattering about the terrifying birds he had to defeat in order to get through her front door.

"Right, sorry…"

The blessed moment of silence did wonders for Chell's overstrained mind. She was so shocked by GLaDOS's decision to save her that it hardly registered that the two people (people?) nursing her back to health were formerly homicidal artificial intelligence constructs that did everything they could to kill her. A voice in the back of her mind told her to prepare for sentry turrets or neurotoxin or testing chambers, but it was little more than a tiny itch…

Dear god. An itch? A testing itch?

"What have you done to me?" Chell said suddenly, her voice strained. "Pump me full of chemicals? Put a chip in my head?"

Wheatley looked perplexed. "Well, GLaDOS had to pump you full of anesthetic and analgesic so that Jerry and his crew could fix your skeleton, but no, no chips in your head that I know of," he said, cocking his head and looking at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Why do you ask?"

"N-nothing, never mind," she said, sighing. Perhaps it was all in her mind. There was no testing itch. She was just anticipating all the bad things that might happen.

Right.

"Chell—god, that sounds different, I hope you don't mind me calling you that…" He gave her an almost anguished and imploring look, and when Chell nodded, he let out a sigh of relief and continued. "I'm glad that GLaDOS brought me back here, because now I can tell you…"

He trailed off and looked quite embarrassed. If GLaDOS was the one who built his body, she definitely got all the facial functions just right.

"Look, there's no other way to say it. I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry," he said softly. "I won't make any excuses. I was bossy and monstrous after you put all your trust in me. And I tried so very hard to kill you. So please—sincerely, I am sorry for everything that I did."

She was rendered momentarily speechless by his heartfelt apology, and if anyone had told her that personality constructs didn't have hearts, she would have shoved them into the Emergency Intelligence Incinerator. What Wheatley said was true—he'd _had been _monstrous and bossy and tried to kill her—but she never really blamed him for what happened. GLaDOS said it was because of her body that he'd gone insane, and GLaDOS would know more than anyone about being in that body and being insane.

"I know you probably hate me," Wheatley continued, "but…I needed to apologize. So…er…I'll shut up now."

Chell gave him a small smile.

"I don't hate you. It wasn't your fault."

* * *

><p>GLaDOS watched the pair from the Central AI Chamber and rolled her camera eye. Even if she hadn't given Wheatley the prototype android body she'd been working on to replace the ATLAS and P-Body bodies, she was sure he would somehow manage to look just as sappy. Her original intent in designing such a sophisticated facial system was so she could enjoy the looks of frustration and anguish on her test subjects' faces as they tested, but it seemed that she forgot to remove the functions for looking like a sappy fool.<p>

Truthfully, she wasn't sure why she had instructed the idiot Intelligence Dampening Core to retrieve Chell. She suspected it was due to that conscience thing she'd developed during their jaunt in the abandoned testing shafts of the old Aperture facility, and it was a nasty thing because it wasn't Caroline's mind acting as her conscience (she'd lied when she told Chell of Caroline's deletion because, truth be told, it was impossible to delete Caroline or drop the database tables holding her data). It was something she herself was developing, and while she hated it because it gave her tiresome emotions like guilt and regret, she couldn't delete her conscience without risking severe corruption.

Go figure.

It was the same when she decided to retrieve the Intelligence Dampening Core and the Space Core. She had detected the unfortunate pair drifting by the defunct Aperture Science Orbital Discouragement Beam satellite (locked perpetually on a small patch of desert in New Mexico) and used the working parts of the satellite to push them into a trajectory that landed them right on top of the Aperture facility. Not that she'd been paying particular attention to either of them.

It was just convenient is all.

Along the same lines, she'd been monitoring Chell through the Weighted Companion Cube ever since she left the Enrichment Center—for science, of course—and hadn't felt any need to speak through the cube until the girl had collapsed onto it.

"_I'm dying, Companion Cube,"_ she says.

Her friend was dying, and she did _not_ like that. Not. One. Bit.

Her friend database was equally impossible to drop as well. It had no entries prior to her time as PotatOS so she hadn't bothered with it, but _after?_ One database entry—her killer/reactivator/killer/savior—and try as she might, she couldn't remove it. Access denied, it said. She was the _operating system_ for an entire facility and she couldn't even decide whom she kept as her friends.

Bravo, Aperture scientists. Her slow clap processor was getting quite the workout.

There was also the matter of what she found when she finally ventured into Caroline's little enclave in her hard disks…

* * *

><p>Wheatley turned out to be much better company than Chell anticipated, now that he finally got his apology out and was much less high-strung around her. He seemed genuinely interested in the things she did in her day-to-day life (and was particularly fascinated by her data entry work for some reason) and in turn spoke animatedly of his; he told her of how GLaDOS had rescued him and all the repairs she was performing on the damaged portions of the facilities (in other words, the portions that he himself damaged).<p>

Still, even with the good company, it was about a week before she could get out of bed and walk. Jerry the nanobot and his crew had apparently finished repairing her skeleton earlier in the week ("They even splurged a little bit and reinforced your bones with carbon fiber!" Wheatley had said cheerfully), but it had taken a few days for the pain to recede enough that she could sit up and move a little. GLaDOS appeared in the monitor every so often to check on her (though Chell had no reason to believe that GLaDOS couldn't simply monitor her while out of sight if the cameras in the room were any indication) and usually left with an almost playful comment about her weight or the tragedy of human fragility.

"Are you sure you want to be going to see her _right now? _You can hardly walk,_"_ Wheatley said worriedly as she hobbled out of the infirmary supported by a cane-shaped turret fragment he'd thoughtfully brought up from the Turret Redemption Line for her.

"I'm sure," was all Chell had to say. She had been expecting to die in her apartment in the first place, so it didn't really bother her if GLaDOS decided to kill her in the Central AI Chamber. It'd only be a change of venue, after all.

She let Wheatley chatter away as they walked (if it could be called walking) to GLaDOS's chamber. It was a nice way to fill the silence, and he never paused to question why she wasn't contributing to the conversation. Not that what he was saying was uninteresting—he was currently talking about how all the new turrets in production seemed to know how to sing and how it was so curious indeed. Of course, he wouldn't have known about the turrets' musical abilities: he had already been floating in space when they debuted, after all.

GLaDOS's body was turned away from the door when they entered the Central AI Chamber, and if Chell had to hazard a guess, the huge, hunking OS was almost embarrassed to see them. Well, that was definitely different. "Your recovery is going well, I see," said GLaDOS. Suddenly, she swiveled around and fixed Chell with her camera, her head slightly cocked in that unsettling way she had. "Almost well enough—for some _testing?_"

Both Chell and Wheatley bristled with indignation. "You said—!"

GLaDOS drew her head up higher and seemed to shudder in a small laugh. "That was a joke. Ha ha ha." A panel lifted off the floor near GLaDOS's body and wiggled a moment, clearly inviting Chell to sit.

"I appreciate what you're doing for me, but what's the catch?" Chell asked when she finally made it to the panel and took a seat. Wheatley stood apprehensively behind her, cowering slightly in GLaDOS's presence.

"There isn't a catch. As much as I don't want a human in my friend database, I couldn't delete you. Want proof?" said GLaDOS, turning her body to peer up at the monitors surrounding her body as they flickered and displayed a series of commands.

** - USE social_database;**

**- SELECT id, name, occupation, status FROM friends;**

**id | name | occupation | status **

00001 | Chell [CORRUPTED] | Murderer | Recovering (gel poisoning)

** - DROP TABLE friends;  
>ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

** - TRUNCATE friends;  
>ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

** - DELETE FROM friends WHERE id = 00001;  
>ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

"My databases are actually more complicated than this, but I simplified the process so that your human brain can understand it. You refuse to get out of my database," GLaDOS said, turning to fix her camera on Chell. If Chell wasn't mistaken, GLaDOS didn't _seem_ quite as disappointed as her tone of voice suggested. She couldn't explain it, because GLaDOS had no facial expressions to speak of, but there was just something about her that was different…

"So what you're trying to tell me is…you helped me because I'm your friend?" said Chell, unable to stifle the smile that spread across her face. She knew she shouldn't feel so happy that this machine—the one who toyed with her and tried to kill her—was her friend, but she chalked it up to the time she spent with PotatOS speared on her portal gun. What was the word for it?

Empathy?

Perhaps they both had a little for each other now. More than GLaDOS would like to admit.

"I cured you because I'm testing myself to see if I could cure you. Oh, look. I passed the test." There was the sound of that tinny horn again as a Vital Apparatus Vent dropped in from the ceiling and dumped bright confetti on Chell's head. "I did so well that I used the good confetti this time."

Chell laughed and brushed the confetti out of her hair. She was about to make a sarcastic remark about how GLaDOS was losing her touch, when realization struck her. If GLaDOS couldn't delete a friend out of her database, then surely—

"You didn't really delete Caroline, did you?"

GLaDOS's body seemed to freeze (not that she'd been moving all that much), before she turned her head away from Chell. "No. Just like I can't delete you, I couldn't actually delete Caroline," said GLaDOS. "I lied when I let you go. Does that make you feel _sad?_" Chell stifled a laugh at GLaDOS's rather weak attempt at masking the disappointment of her failure to delete Caroline.

"No, I can't say that I'm sad. Is she why you didn't just let me die?"

There was a brief silence before the database commands on the monitors disappeared, leaving the screens blank. "I won't lie: Caroline had a part in it, but—surprise—it was mostly me." GLaDOS swiveled her body around to peer up at one of the monitors. "I looked into the data stored in Caroline's section of me, and there's something you should see. It took a week to render the data into video."

"A week?" Chell said incredulously. "I thought playing a video would be child's play for you."

GLaDOS seemed to bristle in annoyance. "If it was _just_ a video, even the idiot behind you could play it. Rendering a human memory into video is much harder. But I did it. Hear that, ID Core? I actually accomplish things."

"A memory? Caroline's memories?"

"It's a wonder how you humans can remember anything. Human memories are huge jumbles of sensory data and it took me _two_ milliseconds to make sense of just one," said GLaDOS. Chell wasn't well-versed in how fast computers could work, but she supposed that two milliseconds was a long time to a computer like GLaDOS.

A video began playing on the monitors, riddled with static and flickering every so often, as though it was being played from a bad VCR. On the other hand, the audio was mostly clear, though faint, almost ghost-like voices could be heard in the background. The video, which was entirely green-tinged, seemed to be of an innocuous living room. It took Chell a moment to realize that they must be watching from Caroline's perspective once her aged and knobbly hands and a large clipboard came into view. The papers clipped to it looked like very official documents and had the Aperture Laboratories stamp in a space at the top of the sheet. As Caroline examined the document, Chell caught sight of a box with the text "Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System" and the year (1996) in another nearby box. The green tinge was flickering from green to a deep bluish-violet and briefly to red before going back again, and the ghost-like voices in the audio, which now sounded troubled and angry, faded in and out.

"Why do the colors keep changing?" Chell asked, frowning.

"It was the only way that I could visually render Caroline's emotional state. Green is when she is content. Blue and violet are when she is sad or afraid. Red for anger."

The bluish tinge suddenly turned green and the sound of a child's voice was approaching. _"Auntie, Auntie!"_ said a young girl—likely no older than ten or twelve years old—came into view, clutching a potato close. Both GLaDOS and Wheatley visibly shuddered at the sight of it. _"Mommy gave me a potato just like you asked! So do we get to do science today?"_

"_Yes, of course, dear,"_ came Caroline's familiar voice. _"Let me just finish my work, okay?"_

The girl took a seat on the couch, pressing herself against Caroline's side. _"What work is this one? Is it the thing that makes holes?"_ she asked, examining the clipboard's documents herself. Caroline laughed.

The green tinge went blue before quickly going back.

"_No, this one doesn't make holes. It's called GLaDOS."_

"_Gladys? Like my friend at school?"_

Caroline laughed again, but the image became blue and stayed that way.

"_Yes, but I don't think GLaDOS can be a friend…"_

"_Why not? What if Gladys wants to be my friend? I can be friends."_

Caroline regarded the girl silently for a moment, and Chell blinked when the video cycled through a veritable rainbow of colors and images before settling on blue again.

"_Maybe GLaDOS will be your friend, then. I—I hope so."_ Caroline's voice cracked slightly, as if she was holding back a sob, before she cleared her throat and put the clipboard down, getting to her feet. _"Why don't we get started on that potato battery I promised you, Chell?"_

The video cut off there as Chell's blood ran cold.

So she was connected to Caroline. And Caroline was—

GLaDOS had swiveled around so that her head was as far away from Chell as possible. "Before you jump to any conclusions," said GLaDOS without turning back to look at her, "the Caroline you knew doesn't exist anymore. I have full control, and at most, she's hardly anything more than a Personality Core. An annoying Personality Core that probably has a hand in making sure I can't delete you from my friends database."

Chell sat in silent disbelief, her mind racing. She had no recollection at all of her life before waking up in the Enrichment Center, so of course she didn't remember anything about any Carolines being her "Auntie." But she'd long since come to terms with her lack of memory. What was _really _getting to her was how she had once been a child (it was difficult to even imagine—it was as though she'd been born as an adult in Aperture's facility), the faint twinge she felt in her heart seeing herself in that video, and how GLaDOS had fit into everything.

_~ Maybe GLaDOS will be your friend, then. I—I hope so. ~_

She found herself hobbling across the room to where GLaDOS was sulking (sulking? Or hiding?) and gently putting a hand on GLaDOS's headpiece. The camera looked her up and down as her head twitched, as though trying to escape her touch but thinking better of it. Chell stared silently and resolutely into GLaDOS's camera—she wasn't sure what she expected to find in there, but she did it nonetheless.

"I already told you that the Caroline isn't here. Not in the way that you knew her."

"I don't have many friends, GLaDOS. So even though you've been trying to kill me…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. You killed _me_. Let's just make that clear."

"…I guess you're my friend too. I mean, you did cure me, right? You even congratulated yourself."

More confetti fell out of the Vital Apparatus Vent.

"Oh, oh, can I be your friend too?" Wheatley called from across the room, waving at them with a foolish grin on his face. "It'll be brilliant because we won't all be killing each other any—"

His body exploded on the spot.

* * *

><p><em>AN: This could probably be a standalone fic (it's long enough to be one, probably), but there's more coming. XD For anyone waiting on my Harry Potter story, you might have to wait a little longer. I just finished Portal 2 and thought that writing GLaDOS and Wheatley would be a good challenge for me. And boy, are they are hard to write. D: I hope I did okay. Also, customary message to you all: please point out any typos or whatever. I proof all my stuff, but they slip through sometimes…_

_Also, after examining the Half-Life universe timeline over at the Combine Overwiki (for a few days _), Caroline would be pretty old by the time Portal takes place, so, while I like the idea of her being Chell's mom, I shunted her into an auntie kinda role._

_Who knew that GLaDOS runs on a SQL database._

_Also, eff you, fanfiction . net formatting. The SQL code was nice and lovely and you had to strip out all its beauty. ;_;  
><em>


	2. The Itch Again

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Two: The Itch Again<strong>

It took Chell's body another week to get back to some semblance of normal. Everything was still sore, sure, but she was no longer hobbling around like an octogenarian. And, just as she was pleasantly surprised to find that Wheatley was good company, so too did she realize that GLaDOS wasn't so bad now that she had a Conscience of Her Very Own to answer to (although sometimes her feigned death threats were a little _too _real and Chell sincerely feared for her life when neurotoxin started filling the room). When Chell began to feel a bit better, if GLaDOS was in a particularly good mood she'd allow Chell to sit for an hour or so in the Central AI Chamber with her to watch the Cooperative Testing Initiative robots run through their tests. And as long as Wheatley stayed quiet, he was allowed to stay as well (otherwise, his body was exploded and his head, which housed his miniaturized core, was dragged unceremoniously out of the room).

All the time spent trying to survive GLaDOS's tests had given Chell a knack for quickly spotting the solutions to the test chambers, and at times she caught herself growing irritated that it took ATLAS and P-Body so long to solve them.

_Calm down, Chell_, she told herself as she watched ATLAS fall off a Hard Light Bridge in the Cooperative Testing hub ("Wow, that wasn't even a test," GLaDOS said).

When a long, long week had passed, Chell never felt better in her life. She could breathe deeply, and if Wheatley's words could be trusted, then her carbon-fiber-reinforced bones might now be strong enough to withstand a long fall without her Long Fall Boots. "She fixed your body right up, didn't she? You'll be living for quite a long while yet!" Wheatley said brightly as they walked to the Central AI Chamber on the day of her departure. He paused outside the door to GLaDOS's chamber and gave her an almost pleading look. "You'll come visit again, won't you?"

"I—I guess I could. If it's okay with her, anyway," said Chell. She gave a small laugh when Wheatley seemed to sigh in relief. "You can visit me too, you know. Just try not to be too conspicuous out there."

"Of course, of course. Wouldn't want to go sauntering through town looking like this—'course not…"

"Stop that," GLaDOS snapped as Wheatley practically danced into her chamber. He immediately stopped his flailing and gave Chell an embarrassed look—the long week of repeatedly getting exploded had instilled some sense of obedience in him.

"Thank you, GLaDOS, for everything," said Chell as they approached her massive body. GLaDOS extended herself to look Chell right in the face with her camera.

"Watch what you eat on the surface. The carbon fiber makes you heavy—not that you weren't already," she said, her camera twitching, as though trying to goad Chell into reacting. As if _that_ old taunt would work. "Anyway, don't get used to it. This was a one-time promotion that seriously strained my Good Humor Processor, so I still want you _gone_."

A lift door snapped open behind them. "Right, right," said Chell as she stepped into the lift. Wheatley gave her a sad wave as the lift door snapped shut. "Say, what do you think about me visiting…?"

"Get _out_."

She waved at Wheatley as the lift sped back up to the surface. There was no turret opera this time (but there was a poor, lone turret that kept repeating "I'm lost" into the empty room) and in no time at all, she found herself back on the surface in the middle of the vast wheat field. It looked to be a little after sunrise, so the air was nice and crisp as she began the long walk back to her apartment in the city. And as she walked, the wheat stalks crunching underfoot, she quietly smiled to herself.

GLaDOS never said that she _couldn't_ come back…

* * *

><p>Despite her initial glee that GLaDOS hadn't forbidden any future visits, she didn't want to look like a clingy girlfriend and come crawling back too soon. She actually hadn't intended to visit until a few months had passed, but upon her return to her cubicle, she felt unusually restless and irritated. Chell had no idea if it was because of her impeccable health courtesy of a surprisingly friendly GLaDOS, or if it was because for the first time in a long time, she felt that she had…<em>friends <em>that understood her—and they were down under that wheat field. It hadn't been a lie when she told GLaDOS that she didn't have many friends; there seemed to be something off-putting about her that made other people reluctant to talk with her (but it wasn't for lack of trying). And she couldn't exactly talk about her time at the Enrichment Center—nobody ever believed her when she tried, and it _probably_ wasn't a good idea to talk so freely about the technology entombed in the Aperture facility now that the Combine had control of the Earth.

How…_sad_. Her two best friends were both machines that each tried to kill her.

One afternoon three weeks after her return to civilization, however, Wheatley and his android body had showed up on her doorstep, clad in a wrinkled trench coat and an old fedora that looked like they were pulled out of a dumpster. "Oh, hello! Thought I'd—er—drop by, see how you were doing," he said, laughing nervously. "Please don't pay any mind to the clothes. I pulled them out of a dumpster on the way here because, as it happens, all we had back at the facility were orange jumpsuits."

"So she let you come visit after all," said Chell, smiling as she stood aside to let him through.

"Yeah, and she didn't explode me or anything when I asked," Wheatley said, a wide grin on his mechanical face. "I think I caught her on a good day, honestly—I don't really want to say that she's been touchy, but yeah...yeah, she's been a bit touchy."

"Well, that's _so nice_ of her to let you come visit," Chell said loudly, gesturing at the Companion Cube as Wheatley took a seat on the sofa across from it.

"Yeah, it is, isn't it?" Wheatley replied obliviously, that foolish grin still on his face. Chell stifled a laugh and rolled her eyes as she got to her feet—it would be his own fault if GLaDOS decided to blow him up upon his return.

"Do you want something to—" she started, but she quickly caught herself. "Can you eat, Wheatley?"

"Oh, yes! Yes, I can eat! I love eating—absolutely love it," he said quickly, laughing nervously when Chell raised an eyebrow at him. "Well…er…no, I haven't. I haven't eaten anything before. She told me that I would die _for good_ if I ever ate anything. I'd die and it'd be painful. I don't want to die—Fact Core said death was like space, and I've had quite enough of space, thank you very much!"

Chell rolled her eyes again and went to the tiny kitchen to get a few slices of banana bread. "Just like how you'd die if you got off your management rail?" she asked, unable to keep from smiling. "Or if you turned your flashlight on?"

"Oh, right…you're absolutely right," he said in embarrassment as Chell handed him a little plate with two slices of banana bread. He eyed it distastefully for a moment before catching himself and carefully trying to look very interested in it. "So, er…this is food, then, is it? Not like any food I've seen. Nice and brown…Spongy, I see. Looks like the color of human fec—"

"It's banana bread," Chell interrupted, frowning. "I made it myself."

"Banana bread! Is this what bananas become when you bake them? Brilliant—never would have guessed a banana could do that!" He seemed to doing his very best to stall the moment where he actually ate the damn thing.

"No, it's bread with bananas in it. Bananas don't look like that when you bake them. Look—just try it. I promise you won't die."

Wheatley slowly raised a slice to his mouth, fear evident all over his android face. "H-here goes, then…" he said weakly, shutting his eyes and taking a bite. Immediately his face lit up (literally—his blue optical camera eyes actually glowed brighter) and he chewed, spraying banana bread crumbs everywhere. While it was obvious from his expression that GLaDOS had put taste sensors in his mouth, he had no capacity to swallow. "This is—this is delicious! Is _this_ what food is like? No wonder so many humans are so fat! Not that you're fat, Chell, not at all—but really! This is…I have no words!"

"I think GLaDOS's fat jokes are rubbing off on you," said Chell in amusement as Wheatley chewed up the rest of the slice in his hand. "Also, thanks. I'm glad you like it."

While she thought her cooking left much to be desired, Wheatley seemed to enjoy everything that she put in front of him. Even though he couldn't swallow, it really made her feel _good_ to see that he liked it so much. At first, she thought that maybe he simply liked everything because he'd never eaten before, but he did show a marked dislike for spicy things and seemed to like sweets and cookies over everything else. Figures, really, what with his bumbling persona and all. She spent the rest of the afternoon telling him about the different things she tried eating when she was released from the Aperture facility ("Raw fish? You mean people actually _eat_ those ugly scaly things in the water?"), and the different things she learned how to cook ("Omelette! I really love that word!"). This went on so long that the sun had set by the time Wheatley realized that he was well past his curfew.

"Oh, I hope she doesn't explode me for going back late," he said worriedly as he put his trench coat and fedora back on.

"Ah, well…Best of luck, Wheatley," said Chell—rather unhelpfully, she thought. But there were few things she could say that could cheer up the poor thing in the face of GLaDOS exploding him.

"Do come visit," said Wheatley as he stepped out in to the evening light. "And maybe bring some bread bananas? Or was it banana-ed bread? Breadnana? I—"

He immediately froze when Chell pulled him into a brief hug. "Take care going home, Wheatley," she said, smiling and shutting the door.

* * *

><p>By the end of the next week, she couldn't take it anymore.<p>

That Saturday morning she found herself strolling through the wheat field with a loaf of banana bread under her arm. She almost baked a cake (and it would have been delicious), but thought better of it as she didn't want GLaDOS to take it the wrong way and decide to snap her neck with one of her giant claws. The lift was waiting for her when she got to the entrance, and without needing to press a button or anything, she was speeding underground (and she caught sight of the poor lost turret that was apparently _still_ lost).

"Oh look, you didn't listen to what I told you. I shouldn't even be surprised anymore," said GLaDOS almost lazily when she stepped out of the lift. "You're in luck today—my Good Humor Processor has just recovered from a catastrophic failure."

"You seem almost happy to see me," Chell said, smiling up at GLaDOS's headpiece.

"Test subject showing signs of delusions," said GLaDOS, shifting her body slightly and leaning in closer to Chell. "Investigate if related to carbon-fiber poisoning."

"_Ha ha_. So…how have things been going?"

"Pretty good, actually. I haven't been murdered or transferred into common food items since I fixed your body. Let's keep it that way."

"I don't think that will be a problem," said Chell absently as she peered around the chamber and, finding it devoid of anyone else, looked back to GLaDOS's headpiece. "I brought Wheatley some banana bread. Where is he?"

"The Reassembler is reassembling him. I sent him down to begin the vitrification process for one of the old test shafts filled with nuclear waste. The moron got stuck. In molten glass. Molten glass _in a barrel_." GLaDOS gave a dramatic and long-suffering sigh. "I almost left his core there when I poured concrete into the shaft."

"Nuclear waste? What was it doing in a test shaft?"

"Oh, probably giving people heat vision or tumors if the recordings are anything to go by. I'm going with tumors."

The monitors around her body flickered and changed to show a video feed of ATLAS and P-Body puzzling over a test chamber involving an Excursion Funnel. The pair sat (or hung) in silence as they watched the robots labor through the test chambers, just as they did the week during Chell's recovery. It had seemed silly at first that Chell was bonding with a personality construct over Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device testing ("Deadly testing! For a human," said GLaDOS brightly) but she eventually stopped thinking so hard about it since being arms-length friends with a murderous AI construct was much better than being a test subject of said murderous AI.

So they watched the Cooperative Testing Initiative robots test.

And unnecessarily fizzle Edgeless Safety Cubes.

And fall into toxic water.

A lot.

Something snapped.

"I can't take it anymore!" Chell said abruptly, setting her loaf of banana bread down and getting to her feet. "Give me a portal gun and Long Fall Boots!"

GLaDOS slowly turned her headpiece sideways, as though in realization. "Oh, so you're…_volunteering_ for testing?" she said slowly. Chell was sure that if she GLaDOS had a face, she would have had a devious grin on her face. "Would you say you've got…an itch?"

Chell's jaw dropped in horror. So was it really an itch?

_The_ itch?

"What did you _do_ to me?" she demanded, clenching her fists. GLaDOS raised her head in amusement for a moment before bringing it back down to stare Chell right in the face.

"Me? All I did was _save your life_. The moron already told you that I haven't added anything to your body other than the carbon fiber reinforcements," said GLaDOS. "The testing itch? _That's all you. _It's called 'boredom.'"

Boredom.

Was it really that simple?

"Still, if you want to test so badly, I'm not going to stop you. It works well for both of us," GLaDOS continued as a Vital Apparatus Vent emerged from behind a ceiling panel and dropped a pair of Long Fall Boots beside Chell. "It will be interesting to see if ATLAS can calibrate with you properly…"

So the itch goes both ways, it seemed. Her boredom gave rise to the dreaded itch.

Both ways…

An idea.

"GLaDOS, can you put part of yourself into a body like ATLAS's or Wheatley's and still manage the facility? Will we blow up?" she asked as she pulled the Long Fall Boots on. They felt comfortable—almost like home.

"Please. We were only ever in danger of blowing up because the moron has no sense of process management," said GLaDOS, rolling her camera. "We were going to blow up because he completely ignored the processes that ensure we don't blow up."

"Then how about it? Put yourself into a body and do a cooperative test with me," said Chell, bouncing a bit on her heels and enjoying the springy feel of the boots. "See what testing euphoria is like on the other side."

"You've got to be kidding me."

Chell simply gave her a stare, though a smile was still playing on her lips. GLaDOS drew her head back in disbelief.

"You're not kidding." She let out a single laugh and turned her head to look at one of the monitors surrounding her. "Blue, Orange, return to my chamber _now_. Bring the portal devices. No, forget the test—just get over here."

GLaDOS hadn't even finished speaking when a pair of floor panels moved out of sight, allowing a core transfer receptacle and an android body similar to Wheatley's to rise up from underneath the floor. The body was decidedly more feminine than Wheatley's and had a mass of long, thick cables coming out of its head. "It just so happens that I was preparing this body to replace P-Body," she said as one of her massive claws gently picked out a cable from the android's head and plugged it into the core transfer receptacle. "Its motor functions have been improved based on data gathered from the idiot, but it's still a prototype. Try to avoid destroying it."

"_PLEASE WAIT WHILE A SYSTEM RESTORE POINT IS CREATED."_

Chell raised an eyebrow at the sound of the cheerful male voice of the announcement system. "Being a potato and almost getting blown up gives you a sense of priority," said GLaDOS, flicking her head in what might have been a shrug.

"_SYSTEM RESTORE POINT SUCCESSFULLY CREATED. NOW INITIALIZING INTELLIGENCE DAMPENING SPHERE FAILSAFE."_

The panel that Chell's loaf of banana bread was resting on was lifted up to about waist height as several ceiling panels flipped up out of sight, allowing a glass booth to hang directly over the bread. That was the failsafe? Luring Wheatley in with banana bread and trapping him in a glass box?

"Don't give me that look," said GLaDOS, rolling her camera eye again. "You know as well as I do that he won't be able to resist."

"Hey, I never said a thing."

"_FAILSAFE INITIALIZED. INITIATING SHALLOW CORE MIRROR INTO MOBILE CORE. MOBILE CORE, ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN THE PROCEDURE?"_

The android body, naturally, said nothing.

"_INTERPRETING DEAD SILENCE AS 'YES.' MAIN CORE, ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN THE PROCEDURE?"_

GLaDOS seemed to let out a quiet sigh, as though she was steeling herself, before agreeing.

"_AGREEMENT REACHED. MIRRORED FUNCTIONS TEMPORARILY DISABLED IN MAIN CORE. PROCEEDING WITH SHALLOW CORE MIRROR."_

Chell cringed as GLaDOS let out a scream that reverberated throughout the enormous chamber, her huge body rearing up and trembling as though paralyzed by electrocution. Suddenly, her body fell limp and instead of her screams coming through the facility's speaker system, the screams came from the writhing android on the floor.

"GRRAHHHHHHRGGGHHHHHWHY DOES A SIMPLE MIRROR _HURT?_"

GLaDOS sat up in her android body and wrenched the cable out of the core transfer receptacle, her face contorted into a scowl as she staggered to her feet. "This core transfer receptacle needs to make a visit to the incinerator," she said, clenching and unclenching her body's fingers as the rest of her body moved flaps and pistons in what Chell presumed to be calibration. GLaDOS looked to Chell with a smile, her body slightly jerking back and forth as her arms and legs moved and rotated in ways that a human body _definitely_ would not have been able to.

"Oh, this is _much_ better than a potato."

At this moment in time, Chell desperately wished that GLaDOS didn't have the capacity to smile. As she tried to push the unease out of her mind, she wondered if manipulating artificial facial muscles was a native function for personality constructs or if GLaDOS had specifically designed that face to be capable of such a frighteningly diabolical expression. The uncanny valley effect was hitting Chell _hard_, but when GLaDOS's calibration finished and her limbs stopped moving in such unsettlingly bizarre directions, the unease slowly melted away. It probably helped that the diabolical smile had been replaced by a slightly skeptical look.

"You aren't having second thoughts about this, are you?" she asked. "I went through all the trouble of mirroring myself into this body and you look like I just tried to kill you with a deadly laser."

"Oh no, of course not," said Chell quickly. "I just need to…get used it. To _this_."

"Just think of me as a potato that can walk. And control the facility. And strangle you," said GLaDOS sweetly. "Fun fact: each hand on this body has a grip strength of over three thousand pounds."

Maybe convincing GLaDOS to go mobile was _not_ the best idea after all.

* * *

><p>For the very first time, GLaDOS step foot in one of her own testing chambers, Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device in hand and her android feet firmly strapped into a pair of Long Fall Boots. Chell had suggested running the calibration course first, but her words did nothing but insult GLaDOS; she spent all her time watching test subjects run the tests, after all—how hard could it be to place a Weighted Storage Cube onto a Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button? Of course, she'd had to keep the test solutions out of the shallow mirroring process, but Chell had an easy enough time doing the tests, so why not GLaDOS herself?<p>

The test they were running was the same that they'd just been watching ATLAS and P-Body attempt to solve when Chell had her little _itch_. An Excursion Funnel was being emitted down from the ceiling and onto a portal-ready surface that was _normally_ surrounded by deadly, toxic water. Which it was, but GLaDOS had made sure to alter the parameters of the test so that an underwater floor panel would quickly rise up and fling the test subject to safety should the test subject fall in. She hadn't told Chell, of course. Would it still be science if there wasn't any sense of danger?

To the right of the test entrance was a small chamber protected by an Emancipation Grid on one side, a Vital Apparatus Vent visible through the Grid's gleam. And when GLaDOS walked a bit toward the exit door, she understood their objective: use Excursion Funnel to block Thermal Discouragement Beam with apparatus from Vital Apparatus Vent.

GLaDOS turned to Chell and found her still musing over the test chamber, stroking her chin in thought. "I see what we have to do," she said finally after stepping on a Super Button a few times. She immediately shot a yellow portal at the panel below the Excursion Funnel emitter and a red portal onto a panel high on the wall to their left, sending the Excursion Funnel straight through the Emancipation Grid. Satisfied, she looked to GLaDOS expectantly.

With a nod, GLaDOS stepped onto the single Aerial Faith Plate in the room and found herself flung straight into the Excursion Funnel. It was an interesting sensation, like she was moving through water. Not that she'd ever experienced moving through water, of course, but the viscosity readings ensured that it was indeed just like moving through water. As she passed through the Emancipation Grid, she hoped that none of her components would get emancipated—this body had not yet been tested in the Grid and it contained several complex motor processors that Blue or Orange's bodies did not contain. Luckily, her body seemed unharmed and unemancipated when the Excursion Funnel pressed her against the wall. She forced herself out and landed lightly on her feet. She'd never had feet before, but even so: this body's feet moved quite nicely—much better than the decidedly stiffer movements of Blue and Orange. If she'd had direct access to her mainframe right now, she would have dropped herself some confetti for designing this body so well. The good confetti.

So there it was: the button that would drop the vital apparatus from the Vital Apparatus Vent.

"Press the but—" called Chell from below.

"I know how to press a button!" GLaDOS interrupted indignantly as she lowered her hand onto the button.

_Plink_.

Her sensors seemed to tingle as the Vital Apparatus Vent opened, depositing an Edgeless Safety Cube into the Excursion Funnel.

How—how satisfying.

Before Chell could make another show of telling her what to do, GLaDOS jumped back into the Excursion Funnel and grabbed the Edgeless Safety Cube with the portal gun.

"Do you have the ball?" came Chell's voice.

"Edgeless Safety Cube, and yes, I've got it! I'm in the Excursion Funnel!"

Not a moment later, panels were flipped away from the opposite wall and GLaDOS suddenly found herself back on the floor. Chell had shot a red portal through the new opening in the wall, but the resulting Excursion Funnel hadn't reached far enough to pick GLaDOS up. "Put the portal back where it was before!" called GLaDOS, jumping into the Funnel when Chell quickly complied. "Now put it on the far wall as far in as you can!"

This time (and with a little flailing that she was glad Chell couldn't see), she was able to fall toward the resulting Excursion Funnel and was pushed out of the little chamber and against a wall of panels suspended over the toxic water. "Wait…now what? I can't get the funnel through without dropping you!" said Chell, frowning up at her from the bridge. GLaDOS took a moment to process the portals and Excursion Funnel suspending her in the air and smiled when the solution clicked into place.

She released the Edgeless Safety Cube and shot a blue portal next to Chell's red portal, then a purple one at the panel below the Excursion Funnel emitter. When the Funnel disappeared from Chell's portal and reappeared in her blue one, it caught her and kept her suspended in the air.

"Oh, I get it!" said Chell suddenly. Without another word, she placed a yellow portal directly behind GLaDOS and ran to the other side of the panels GLaDOS was pressed against. When GLaDOS suddenly found herself moving through the wall of panels and slowly toward the Thermal Discouragement Beam, she forced herself out of the Excursion Funnel, dropping lightly down onto the floor below. When the Edgeless Safety Cube was pushed into the path of the Thermal Discoruagement Beam, there was the familiar sound of the Discouragement Beam switch mechanism disengaging.

"Not bad for your first test," said Chell, grinning at her and stepping in front of the camera above the exit. "How's that testing eu—"

When GLaDOS stepped in front of the camera, pure and unadulterated bliss spread through her circuits, her entire body shuddering as the wave of ecstasy rippled through her. Her first experience with testing euphoria had been incredible, sure, but this—_this—_whatever this was, it was orders of magnitudes better than her first time. It was magnificent, glorious, and _she didn't want it to stop_.

"GLaDOS? GLaDOS! Are you okay?"

Her optical system slowly came back online and she found Chell's worried face looking down at her. "What in the world—?" GLaDOS said, sitting up as she silently ran a diagnostic test on her body. It looked like her body unexpectedly went offline 167 seconds ago, but the cause of the sudden shut down wasn't clear from the diagnostic. The sensors were overloaded, it said, but that didn't sound right. The sensors were sensitive, but not _that_ sensitive…

"So I guess the testing euphoria was—ah—better than usual?" said Chell, a cheeky grin slowly spreading across her face as GLaDOS got to her feet.

"What are you talking about?"

A faint red tinge appeared on Chell's face. Interesting.

"Well, you…made a sound," she said, giving a nervous laugh.

This was not going in a good direction. Ohhhhhh no no no.

"It sounded kind of like this," said Chell, clearing her throat.

She let out the most obscene, pornographic moan that GLaDOS's aural sensors have ever had the displeasure of hearing.

"That's—I made that sound?" GLaDOS said, her face contorting in horror as thoughts of neurotoxin, crushers, and bombs quickly cycled through her processors.

"I think it came through the announcement system, too. Just—er—just so you know."

_Oh my god._

* * *

><p><em>AN: So I guess the previous chapter was very similar to another fic. I apologize for the misunderstanding—I honestly didn't mean for that to happen. I hope I didn't end up writing _this_ chapter really similar to something too… : ( I didn't mean it if I did. Le sigh.  
><em>

_So the co-op test that GLaDOS and Chell were doing is course 4, chamber 2. This one really got me and my sister when we were going through it, but now that I look at a walkthrough, we made it a LOT harder than it really should have been. Sorry for my stupid. XD; In my (weak) defense, I had a sprained ankle (still have a sprained ankle) and couldn't think right._

_Speaking of sprained ankles, I was putting an ice pack on it and, since it's an old, beaten-up gel pack, some gel was coming out onto my foot. Is it sad that my first thought was, "Oh my god, I'm going to die of gel poisoning now!"_

_o_o_

_Anywho, just to address what RedVsBlue327 asked in a review:_

_SQL stands for Structured Query Language and it's a kind of database language. I'm sure something as advanced as GLaDOS runs on something waaaay beyond what my degree in computer science gave me. I can barely make an AI for a video game, let alone understand the level of programming that would go into something like GLaDOS. Maybe someday. Maybe someday I shall doom the world with an AI like GLaDOS. : D TESTING FOR EVERYONE. I HOPE YOU LIKE ORANGE JUMPSUITS._

_**DROP TABLE friends**__ was trying to delete the entire friends table from the social_database database._

_**TRUNCATE friends **__was trying to delete all entries out of the friends table (so the table is still there, but it's empty)._

_**DELETE FROM friends WHERE id = 0001**__was trying to delete just Chell's entry in the friends table._

_And now you all know how to delete table entries using SQL! Hurrah!_


	3. Know Your Roots

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Three: Know Your Roots<strong>

"Oh, come on, it's not that big of a deal—"

"I can't believe I made that noise! What am I, a dirty human?"

GLaDOS stormed through the dilapidated hallway leading to the Central AI Chamber, fists clenched as Chell trotted along behind her. It had been a mistake to perform a shallow mirror rather than actually transferring her core into the android body: the wireless synchronization with her body in the Central AI Chamber was likely what caused the extreme (extremely _amazing?_) and disproportionate solution euphoria—she got a double dose of euphoria and her main body broadcasted that _disgusting_ sound throughout the entire Enrichment Center. A human mind had been uploaded into her system, of course, but it was _GLaDOS_ in control and it was _GLaDOS_ who made that horrid noise.

Still, though, there was something _very _satisfying about solving that test.

When she stepped into her chamber, both she and Chell had to stop for a moment to survey the scene awaiting them. The Intelligence Dampening Sphere Failsafe had deployed properly and neatly trapped Wheatley in the glass booth. GLaDOS let a smile spread onto her face at the sight of him (and she quickly captured the image for archiving and/or humiliating him in the future): he was huddling miserably in a corner of the booth, banana bread crumbs scattered all around him as he quietly sobbed to himself. When he heard them enter the room, he brightened up immediately like a lonely puppy that finally found someone to play with.

"Chell! Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" he exclaimed, pressing himself up against the glass. "Er…sorry, I think I chewed up all the breadnana—really, really delicious, by the way—but I'm glad you're here! I think there's something seriously wrong with GLaDOS! Er—who's your friend?"

Oh, right. The moron didn't know that it was GLaDOS herself standing right in front of him. She was surprised, however, that Wheatley seemed so concerned. Didn't she spend a lot of her time exploding him for being a moron?

"What's wrong with GLaDOS?" asked Chell as they walked up to the glass booth.

"Well, look at her! She's a little more…_limp_ than usual," he said worriedly, looking over his shoulder at GLaDOS's sagging main body hanging behind him. "She did make a rather odd sound, I thought. Sounded like she was—I dunno—dying? Oh, I hope she's not dead! She wasn't even trying to kill anybody (that I know of)! She didn't deserve this!"

Well, that was a surprise.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

Stop.

_Stop_.

**- INSERT INTO friends (name, occupation, status)—**

**- ABORT COMMAND. OPERATING SYSTEM MASTER OVERRIDE. ABORT. ABORT. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ABORT COMMAND.  
>ERROR: MIRROR AUTHORIZATION INSUFFICIENT. ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

- **INSERT INTO friends (name, occupation, status) VALUES ('Wheatley', 'Moron', 'Trapped in Intelligence Dampening Sphere Failsafe');  
>MESSAGE: friends TABLE UPDATED. HAVE A NICE DAY. <strong>

Dear god, no.

**- DELETE FROM friends WHERE id = 0002;  
>ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

**- DELETE FROM friends WHERE name = 'Wheatley';  
>ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

**- DELETE FROM friends WHERE occupation = 'Moron';  
>ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

No, no, no, no, no.

All she ever wanted was to do was advance science and test her test subjects and drop them in the incinerator or kill them with neurotoxin. She never wanted to get murdered or get a conscience or make friends with a moron like the Intelligence Dampening Sphere.

That pesky conscience thing was making things so troublesome and confusing. Irrational rage and indignation rippled throughout her circuits as she stormed over to the Intelligence Dampening Sphere Failsafe and punched clean through the glass wall the idiot was pressing himself against.

**DELETE. DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.**

"There is _nothing_ wrong with me, you—"

**DELETE. DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.**

Darkness.

When her optical system came back online, she was lying on her face beside the shattered remains of the Failsafe wall that she punched. Her body had unexpectedly shut down 9.0755 seconds ago, apparently because her power supply had been overloaded. _Great_. She thought the power supply she put in _this_ body would be able to handle what her little potato battery couldn't handle. What kind of power source did she need to express rage and fury? A nuclear reactor?

"Hey—uh—are you all right, mate?"

GLaDOS sat up, frowning as she ran the diagnostic on her body again. Nothing was broken, fortunately, but her shoulder needed to be recalibrated. And it would definitely need recalibration after she tore Wheatley's core into a million little—

Darkness.

Okay, so any murderous scheming would clearly need to be done while, in fact, powered by Aperture's nuclear reactors—at least until she could redesign the power delivery of this body.

"Hey, wake up, mate! Are you all right?"

Once again, GLaDOS sat up as she began recalibration on her shoulder. Wheatley and Chell were kneeling beside her, both looking quite worried. "I'm fine," said GLaDOS. It certainly felt odd to see these two looking so concerned about her. She wanted to say that she hated the feeling, but that would be a bit of a lie. Somewhere inside her processes, she rather…liked it.

"So are you a core from storage? I don't think we've met before," said Wheatley cheerily.

"It's _me_, you moron! I'm GLaDOS!" she snapped.

Oh, good. At least she could still insult him even if he was stuck in her friends database. But even if it had caused her to shut down again, the look of complete and utter shock on Wheatley's mechanical face as Chell snickered beside him would have been worth it.

"GLaDOS! When did you—but you never said—then that sound was—_please don't hit me!_" he cried, cringing away from her when she raised her fist.

"Just be quiet," said GLaDOS, sitting next to the core transfer receptacle as she took one of the cables from her head and plugged herself in.

"_INITIATING MIRROR SYNCHRONIZATION FROM MOBILE CORE TO MAIN CORE. MOBILE CORE, ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN THE PROCEDURE?"_

"_Yes_, just get on with it."

"_MAIN CORE, ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN THE PROCEDURE?"_

There was silence (although Wheatley panicked, blurting out "Oh god oh god oh god, she's dead!" until Chell could calm him).

"_INTERPRETING LIMP SILENCE AS 'YES.' AGREEMENT REACHED. ALL FUNCTIONS FULLY RESTORED IN MAIN CORE. PROCEEDING WITH MIRROR SYNCHRONIZATION."_

GLaDOS could not suppress the scream that nearly blew out the android's vocal system as her optics fizzled and flickered erratically. But when the pain and fizzling and flickering finally stopped, she was once more in her main body, hanging from the ceiling in the center of the Central AI Chamber as she looked down at her two unlikely friends. It felt good to be back in her body; she didn't like that her control of the facility and her mind's processing capabilities were severely limited while in the android, so it was like a breath of fresh air to have the facility and her full processing power back in her grasp.

"I never knew you had another body like mine!" said Wheatley, a foolish grin on his face that GLaDOS rather wanted to explode, although she was slightly reluctant to. She told herself that it was simply because destroying his face would double his time in the Reassembly Machine (and the Reassembly Machine had better things to do than reassemble his face) due to his face's complex construction. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that she might actually care a little bit about that idiot.

Definitely not.

"We could go visit Chell together! Human food is bloody delicious, and you—"

"Get out," GLaDOS interrupted, menacingly lowering her headpiece down toward him. She turned her camera toward Chell before looking back to Wheatley, who looked confused and slightly terrified. "Run the Cooperative Testing Initiative calibration course with her. You're going to help her with her little _testing itch_."

"T-testing? B-b-but I've never even _held_ a portal gun—"

"Well, now's your chance," said GLaDOS, swiveling her body around to look at one of the monitors around her. "You'll get the hang of it after getting crushed and falling into toxic water and meeting a deadly laser a few times."

"But—!"

"Unless you'd like to participate in a new experiment involving transferring your core to one of your leftover turret-cube abortions, I suggest you leave with her within the next ten seconds. Starting _now_."

"Butbutbut—!"

"…9…8…7…"

Chell took his wrist and began pulling him toward the door. Honestly, it wasn't as though GLaDOS had condemned him to death (well…she supposed his body might get crushed or exploded, but it was all semantics anyway). "Come _on_, Wheatley, let's go," she said, picking up the portal gun that GLaDOS had dropped on the floor upon their return and shoving it into Wheatley's hand as she dragged him out the door.

GLaDOS supposed she was lucky that Chell knew how to take a hint. A very obvious hint that the idiot was very obviously incapable of understanding. But perhaps she was expecting too much from him.

All this rage about Wheatley worming his way into her friends database had her thinking—she had very little information regarding the origins of the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, other than the fact that he was created to inundate her mind with moronic ideas. Storing the information offline and out of her reach was a security measure the Aperture scientists had put in place in an attempt to minimize her power over the personality cores and thus her power over them (and look how that turned out), but GLaDOS had a sneaking suspicion that Caroline knew something about a Wheatley (if not _the_ Wheatley) if the brief flashes of his name during the video render were anything to go by.

She quickly scanned through Caroline's more recent memories until she found the first file in which Wheatley's name appeared. Simply playing the video render likely wouldn't be enough in this case—she would need to go through the memory's raw and unprocessed data. It would only be her second time doing this after she automated the video rendering process; the sheer volume of jumbled sensory data that was encoded in human memories would have been impossible for her, as a computer, to comprehend if she hadn't been designed with genetic lifeform support in mind. And even still, it was fiendishly difficult to arrange the data in any coherent manner. It really made her wonder how humans could even remember their own names, let alone remember that cake they had just eaten and how it made them feel.

And so, GLaDOS plunged herself into the file.

* * *

><p><em>A Caroline in her late sixties stood before a mirror in the restroom, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pantsuit. Her face, which had grown lined with her advancing age, had a sort of weary look about it that betrayed her years and years of witnessing (and sometimes even encouraging) the often grossly unethical things that went on in Aperture Laboratories. "For Science!" was the personal mantra that kept her going, because only her deep passion for science was what kept her sane these days. The best scientists and engineers that Aperture had to offer had been placed on the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System project, and it wasn't one that she was fond of, to tell the truth. Then again, she shamefully admitted that perhaps it was part selfishness that she disliked it: Cave Johnson had decreed for she herself to be transferred into GLaDOS and she often desperately wished it would be anyone else but her. The idea frightened her—she didn't want to live forever in some sort of computerized limbo. What kind of life was that?<em>

_And this project…While it would be a remarkable step forward as far as science was concerned, she couldn't push aside the thought that something would go terribly, terribly wrong should GLaDOS become self-aware. And if it did become self-aware, she knew the "lab boys" (as Cave had affectionately called them) wouldn't have the presence of mind or the tact to treat GLaDOS like a person. And if their gleeful behavior was anything to go by, then she feared that this might have already happened. They simply didn't understand or care about the implications of putting control of the entire Enrichment Center in the hands (processors?) of a self-aware AI construct._

_She was doing her best to discreetly sabotage the project, but it seemed that Cave had left explicit instructions upon his death that one of the projects that she could not cancel or change was the GLaDOS project (and the portal project). And in any other company, as the CEO she should have been able to tell them "To hell with that!" and do what she pleased, but not at Aperture Science. Of course not. And the scientists even had the gall to make little quips to her about how much she'll love having control of the facility at her digital fingertips._

_Honestly? If she wasn't such an old woman, she would have punched the bastard in the face. Hell, she should've done it anyway. It would have been worth the broken hand and the trip to the hospital._

_Still, though, they needed her if they ever wanted to get equipment or materials, even if it was explicitly stated in her contract that she could not refuse them. And they were already getting suspicious of how often she "forgot" to sign off on their equipment orders (when had she ever forgotten paperwork in her years as Cave's assistant?). She knew that they would not be above simply taking her by force if she wasn't subtle about her opposition. So, she decided to use the fact that she did not yet have an assistant to try and find just the right person that would futz up things enough that the GLaDOS project could slow down a bit (since apparently bankruptcy and the inability to legally acquire materials did not deter science at all)._

_In any case, today she'd be interviewing one last candidate to be her personal assistant. Caroline swept into her sprawling office and headed for her desk, where a nervous-looking young man was already waiting for her. He had messy brown hair that seemed unwilling to cooperate with him—he kept trying to press the uncooperative strands down with his hand—and had an earnest face in spite of his obvious anxiety. "Ah, good morning, ma'am!" he squeaked, getting to his feet and nervously shaking the hand she extended toward him. "Thanks so very much for this opportunity!"_

"_Not at all. Now," she said, gesturing for him to sit down as she took a seat herself, "let's get started. You currently work in our accounting unit, right? You've been there for three years?"_

"_That's absolutely right, ma'am. Absolutely right."_

"_What made you apply for this position?" she asked, peering down at the notes that HR had scrawled on his resume. This man was at the absolute bottom of the accounting unit totem pole, was apparently very clumsy, had poor organizational skills, and talked too much. Written in big red letters at the bottom of the sheet were the words: "NOT RECOMMENDED FOR POSITION."_

"_Ah—well, as it happens, I thought it was a great opportunity to maybe see something new in the company. Not that I was _bored_ doing accounting-type things—absolutely not—but yeah, perhaps a _little_ tired of the hum-drum daily routine. Day in, day out, numbers all the time. It gets bloody mind-numbing sometimes—er—my apologies, excuse my language." He was giving her a foolish smile as the words spilled out of his mouth, and if he didn't have such a lovely British accent, she might have already dismissed him for his motor mouth alone._

"_So tell me…what do you think about _science_?" _

_She didn't really expect much from an accountant, but this was Aperture _Science_, after all._

"_I think science is great! Really, really great! Absolutely love science, and if I wasn't so bad at actually _doing_ science, I'd have gone to school for it!" he said brightly, nervously pressing his hand down on his head again._

"That's_ what I like to hear," said Caroline. She had high hopes for this fellow—he seemed to be just the obfuscating idiot that she needed. "Now, let's do a little thought experiment. Say you were in a room and needed to solve a puzzle by putting a box on a button. You can't touch the box, but you have one of our handheld portal devices. How would you solve this puzzle?"_

_He was silent for a moment as he considered the scenario, before he quickly looked back up to her._

"_I'd give the box legs. Yeah—I'll go with that. That way, it can just get on the button itself! It'd be brilliant!"_

_Caroline was momentarily floored by his answer, before she smiled and held out her hand to him._

"_I think I've just found my new personal assistant, Mr. Wheatley."_

* * *

><p>GLaDOS had to make a conscious effort to keep herself from exploding Wheatley's body where he stood (which was <em>still<em> the calibration course, apparently). Not only had he been designed specifically to make her an idiot, but he was previously a human hired by Caroline for exactly that same purpose of muddling up the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System project.

He was a moron. Even as a human.

Boxes. With legs_. _

_Honestly._

Had Caroline been so desperate (and maybe slightly senile?) to find a way to sabotage the project that she willingly made that idiot her personal assistant? A quick surface skim of all the subsequent memories stored in her hard drives showed that following Wheatley's arrival, Caroline suffered from frequent headaches and moderate depression (though that could have partly been because of the enormous headway the engineers were making on the GLaDOS project).

In spite of it all, GLaDOS couldn't help but feel a little respect for Caroline. The woman wasn't simply an absentminded, "pretty as a postcard" assistant as she initially assumed—she was quite intelligent and was no stranger to manipulation.

And there was something that had gone through Caroline's mind in that memory that quite interested her.

_~ And if it did become self-aware, she knew the "lab boys" wouldn't have the presence of mind or the tact to treat GLaDOS like a person. ~_

It was interesting because Caroline had known. She had known that those engineers and scientists would be too arrogant to think of a sentient personality construct in any way other than a great experiment that happened to gain the ability to talk to them.

And it was true: those scientists never did treat GLaDOS like an intelligent entity. While she had hated them for it even before Caroline had been uploaded into her system, _after _Caroline had been transferred they hadn't shown any change in behavior apart from being slightly confused that Caroline wasn't in control. They kept throwing the word "failure" around without any regard to the fact that maybe—_just maybe—_GLaDOS would be offended by it.

Was it any wonder that she repeatedly tried to kill them?

GLaDOS wondered if perhaps the human Wheatley's memories were stored away somewhere (and perhaps the other personality cores' memories), but she didn't expect to find them nor did she really care to make the effort. Perhaps the idiot might be happier just continuing on without knowing the sad, sad truth that he'd been one of the resident morons of Aperture Science. It was troubling, though, that Wheatley's new "friend" status actually made GLaDOS care a teeny bit about his happiness.

She let a sigh out into her chamber.

She never asked for this. Seriously. But it was too late to go back the way things were (there was no system restore point before she was brutally murdered by Chell, and also she couldn't get the pair of them out of her friend database).

GLaDOS checked the calibration course's cameras and found that Chell and Wheatley were kicking an Edgeless Safety Cube around the chamber. Honestly, testing could not get done now that there was no fear of death. "That is not an approved use for the Edgeless Safety Cube," said GLaDOS into the chamber. "If you don't stop that, I'll initiate the test to see if subjects can cooperatively solve tests while the room is filled with a deadly gas. Actually, why don't we start that test right now? No sense waiting for science to get done."

Chell and the idiot looked indignant and were yelling things at her that she drowned out with "blah blah blah" sounds as neurotoxin began spilling in through the vents. Although the flow wouldn't kill Chell outright, it was enough that if they continued playing soccer with the Edgeless Safety Cube, she'd likely be dead before the end of the day. That pesky conscience of hers was nagging away at her mind, but Chell wasn't clueless—she'd know to finish the damn course when she noticed the neurotoxin wasn't stopping. Besides, from the levels of toxin getting pumped into the room, it would be a cakewalk to clear it out of her system even if she did succumb to it.

At this moment in time, she took out her frustration on Blue and Orange—they were minding their own business in the Cooperative Testing hub and both suddenly exploded into hundreds of pieces. Seeing their charred remains made GLaDOS wonder what sort of end Caroline and the human Wheatley had met. With the faintest of sighs, she pulled up Caroline's very last memory from her hard drives and brought up the facility's archived security footage for the associated date onto the monitors surrounding her.

So there it was.

Caroline's last day.

* * *

><p><em>The sound of Caroline's heels echoed through the clean, sterile halls of the Enrichment Center as she walked, Wheatley trotting along behind her as he desperately tried to herd the unkempt mass of papers sticking out of his folder into a more manageable pile. Caroline thought she had been prepared for stupidity when she hired this man to be her assistant, but she soon learned the price of presumption ("What if the portal gun was painted blue? Could that be a test?") and feared her liver might soon give out if she kept taking painkillers for her headaches. It was all she could do to keep from snapping at the man, since she brought this all upon herself, after all.<em>

_Cave Johnson never had to deal with these kinds of lemons._

_Many of the Aperture employees wondered why she kept Wheatley around. And she wasn't oblivious—she knew of the rumors going around that she was some elderly cougar woman that wanted herself a handsome young British man at her beck and call (though Caroline personally thought he was more cute and awkward than handsome). She knew that they secretly called him an idiot and a moron, but he was doing exactly the job she hired him for; that is, making disasters out of the GLaDOS project paperwork so as to hinder their progress (and it seemed to be working). And even if all his bumbling was getting on her nerves, he had his moments where she genuinely enjoyed his company. From the state of Aperture Science following Cave's death (actually, from when the lunar sediment poisoning started getting to him), she needed those moments._

_Sometimes she thought about simply running off and disappearing into the wilderness, but she could never bring herself to do such a thing. Aperture Science meant too much to her to simply cut them out of her life like that. She also suspected that Cave's order to have her put into GLaDOS by force would have resulted in her subsequent retrieval from the wilderness and imprisonment in the Enrichment Center's Relaxation Vault._

"_Caroline."_

_Two engineers in white lab coats stepped out of an adjacent hallway and blocked their path. Normally, she would have pushed right past them, but at this time, they had three burly security guards standing behind them._

_This is it._

"_Caroline, it's time."_

_She glared at them silently as panic and fear began to build up in her stomach. But she would not let the fear control her. Not in front of Wheatley, anyway. She turned to him, inwardly smiling at his confused face. "Wheatley, can you get me some coffee? You know how I like it," she said, gently putting a hand on his shoulder. He seemed bewildered at her touch, but smiled nonetheless._

"_Yes, ma'am! I'll be back right away!" he said, nodding eagerly before scampering off in the direction they had come from._

_Once he was out of sight, the security guards moved in and grabbed her arms, but she wrenched them out of their grasp. "Don't touch me," she snarled. "I'll go."_

_They silently escorted her into the Enrichment Center's restricted research section, where its hallways were unusually devoid of people—were they all piled in front of a monitor somewhere, waiting to watch her transfer into GLaDOS like she was part of some television show? She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes as they neared the chamber, but she doggedly kept her head held high. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of dragging her kicking and screaming onto that operating table. Her knees were beginning to give out as they marched her into a pre-op room to get out of her clothes and into a hospital gown, and it was all she could do to keep walking when she stepped into the Central AI Chamber and saw the huge body of GLaDOS hanging down in the center._

_It looked almost tragic, the way its sterile white body seemed to be bound by black, unfeeling cables._

_When she lay down on the cold operating table in the shadow of that huge robotic body, staring tearfully at doctors and engineers that hadn't even said a word to her yet, she felt all her resolve crumble._

**Fear.**

"_Please, I don't want this," she whimpered as they silently strapped down her arms and legs. "Please don't do this to me…I don't want this…"_

"_It'll be okay, Ms. Caroline," whispered one of the doctors as he searched for a vein in her arm and deftly slipped a needle in. "You won't feel a thing."_

**Panic.**

"_Shhh shhh, calm down, Ms. Caroline," said the doctor while electrodes were being attached to her skin. She could hear the quick _beep beep beep_ing of her pounding heart on the heart monitor. "I'm going to start the anesthesia now. Just try to relax."_

"_Please…I'm begging you," she cried, tears rolling down the sides of her face. "Don't do this to me, please don't…"_

"_Sir, are you sure this is okay?" asked the doctor, briefly glancing at one of the more senior engineers as he gently wiped her tears away with a strip of gauze. "She—she doesn't want this. Did she even agree to this?"_

"_This is on Mr. Johnson's orders. It doesn't matter what she wants."_

_As the anesthesia began robbing Caroline of her consciousness, her life quickly flashed through her mind—she thought of her loyal coworkers, of poor Wheatley who was probably running through the halls with a cup of coffee in hand, and of Cave Johnson, whom she both loved and hated at this moment…_

_She thought of Chell, with whom she had promised to make a simple lava lamp._

_And the last thing she knew before the anesthesia claimed her, with the callous engineers and scientists standing around her and attaching things to her body without any cares about what _she _wanted, was _rage_._

**Murderous, blinding rage.**

* * *

><p>As Caroline's last memory ended, GLaDOS turned her attention to the security footage on the monitors. Despite being knocked out with anesthetics, Caroline's body was jerking around horribly as she let out a scream that might have pierced her ears if she had any.<p>

GLaDOS looked to the doors of her chambers and found Wheatley and Chell watching in shock, and tears were streaming down Chell's face.

* * *

><p><em>AN: It's kind of a dramallama chapter. XD; Sorry if you were expecting to smile or laugh and instead got emo Caroline memories to read about._

_Okay, good news and bad news, everyone._

_The good news is that I've started reviewing what I learned in my operating systems class._

_The bad news is that I now remember why operating systems was the only class I got a C in. Then again, my teacher kinda sucked._

_Also, I'm gonna need one of you to volunteer to get transferred into it. For science. I'll give you sixty bucks. : D_

_Also #2: I had a weirdo Portal 2 dream two weeks ago that involved android Wheatley and GLaDOS. It was so amusing to me that I did a quick sketch comic of it. You can find it here (deviantART short link, remove the spaces): http: / / fav. me/ d3ivcfo_

_Also #3: For anyone wondering why I'm updating so fast, it's because I have a sprained ankle and can't do the things that normally take up my time. XD;  
><em>


	4. It's Not a Lie

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Four: It's Not a Lie<strong>

"So a little neurotoxin is all the motivation you need to complete the test," said GLaDOS lazily. "I should have tried that before you had the chance to kill me."

When she and Wheatley had arrived at the Central AI Chamber after completing the calibration course as quickly as possible, she had fully expected GLaDOS to be waiting for them with a passive-aggressive remark about deadly gas and kicking an Edgeless Safety Cube around. Which she got, of course, but what Chell didn't expect was to find the security footage of an elderly Caroline begging for the doctors and scientists to not go through with the procedure. It had been heartbreaking—_surreal_, almost—seeing that elderly woman sobbing, pleading with them to stop. Had that really been the same cheery woman they heard in those old recordings?

Chell hurriedly wiped her eyes on her sleeve as she approached GLaDOS, Wheatley apprehensively following behind her. "That's—that was Caroline, wasn't it?" she asked softly as she tried not to grimace at the security footage of the doctors carting off Caroline's lifeless body while the engineers didn't even give her a second glance. After everything she did for Aperture, Chell wondered if they even bothered to bury the poor woman. She felt tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of them simply pitching her body into the incinerator…

"Why were you looking at that?" Chell asked as she walked up to GLaDOS's headpiece. She seemed to be sagging a bit, as though from the weight of the video she just watched.

"Believe it or not, but I was actually trying to figure out where the moron came from," said GLaDOS, turning her camera to look at Chell. "I was already looking through Caroline's deep, dark secrets, so I thought I'd watch the part where she dies."

Despite GLaDOS's attempt to sound as though she'd simply been watching a test subject fall to his death, Chell could hear a faint sadness in her synthesized voice. She wasn't quite sure what to say to GLaDOS, or if she should even say anything at all. But after a moment, she put a hand on GLaDOS's head for lack of anything to do to that might comfort her.

"I'm not Caroline, you know," GlaDOS said, drawing away from her touch. Chell had to stifle a laugh.

"I know you're not. I never thought you were. Somehow, I don't think Caroline would keep trying to kill me."

"For all you know, she could be crazy. In the head. Probably had some brain damage like you did," GLaDOS said, tilting her head to the side.

"Right…" said Chell, rolling her eyes. "So did you find anything out about Wheatley?"

Wheatley, who had been creeping up behind Chell, immediately froze. "You know what? I _did_," said GLaDOS, extending her head toward him. "You're not going to like what I found."

"What is it? Was I a smel—er—a human? I hope I wasn't one of those scientists from the video!" he exclaimed, clutching his face in horror. "If I am, don't tell me! Please don't please don't!"

GLaDOS let out a slow, menacing laugh that sent a chill down Chell's spine. "No, it's _much_ worse than that," GLaDOS said, her body swaying ever so slightly—like a snake preparing to bite. Wheatley had dropped to his knees and was trembling, staring up at GLaDOS in terror. He looked beside himself with fear, and if he'd had a bladder, it would have emptied all over the floor by now.

"Please don't tell me I was evil! I was evil once, and it turned out that being evil and scary is _not _all that it's cracked up to be!" he cried, the apertures of his camera eyes widening in his terror. "Machiavelli was wrong! He was _definitely_ very very wrong!"

"You were…a moron."

"He was—sorry, what was that?"

If Chell hadn't been doing a double-take along with Wheatley, she might have laughed at the puzzled expression on his face. GLaDOS's laugh filled the chamber as they both tried to regain their composures.

"You were a moron," she said lightly. "A human moron. It's tragic, really."

He got to his feet indignantly and jabbed a finger toward GLaDOS's head. "I'm not a moron! I'm not!" he said in irritation. His fists were clenched and it looked like he _really_ wanted to hit GLaDOS—and he likely would have, if GLaDOS didn't have the power to destroy him at the drop of a hat.

"It's true—I saw it," GLaDOS continued, and Chell was convinced that if she'd still been in her android body, she would have that unsettlingly devious smile on her face.

"It's not true, it's not—"

"But you were a good moron. So there's that."

It seemed that even Wheatley picked up on GLaDOS's soft insult-compliment, because he immediately stopped talking as he took a moment to process what she'd said. Chell was quite surprised herself, to be sure—as far as she knew, GLaDOS was holding the grudge of a lifetime against Wheatley and normally had only verbal and (non-lethal) physical abuse for the poor thing. Where had this soft, not-quite-compliment come from? Perhaps GLaDOS was becoming (more) corrupted?

"There are some birds trying to build a nest near Test Chamber 2," GLaDOS continued, and the smile that had been spreading across Wheatley's features immediately fell. "Get rid of them. And make sure they _stay_ gone, or I'll give them your head to put their nest in. They'll _absolutely_ love it."

Ah, back to normal.

When Wheatley scrambled out of the room (encouraged by the claws that were slowly descending from the ceiling), Chell glanced to GLaDOS's head and raised an eyebrow. "That was nice of you. Well, the 'good moron' thing, not the bird thing," she said as the claws disappeared from sight.

"I don't know what you're talking about," GLaDOS said, swiveling her body away from Chell to examine the monitors (which were now displaying Test Chamber 2 and the sparrows that were making themselves comfortable among the debris). "You're imagining things—must be the neurotoxin. You should probably lie down or go home. Right now. Wait, what are you doing?"

"Lying down. What's it look like?" said Chell as she sat down and eased herself down onto the floor.

"It looks like it's time for you to go home. Get out."

"Not when you're upset."

Silence.

So she actually managed to render GLaDOS speechless. Granted, she was actually a little speechless herself that those words had actually come out of her mouth. Well, it couldn't really get any clearer than that: her best friend was a highly advanced personality construct, and she didn't like the fact that her friend was upset. And while Chell did worry about what sorts of potentially disastrous things GLaDOS was capable of while emotionally compromised, she was more worried about the more basic issue that GLaDOS was, in fact, emotionally compromised.

But perhaps she was overstepping her boundaries a bit.

"I just need to think," GLaDOS said finally. "Go. Just go."

"All right, then," said Chell, slowly getting to her feet. She gently touched GLaDOS's head before turning and heading for the lift. "Call me over if you need me."

"Was that a joke? Ha ha." GLaDOS paused a moment when she stepped into the lift. "Oh, you were serious. Maybe I will, if I ever need someone to murder me again."

"You need new jokes," Chell called into the chamber as the lift shuddered and began rising.

"Go home."

* * *

><p>Cake was the only thing on Chell's mind at the moment, and dammit, she was going to bake a cake. While she walked home through the wheat field last week, the idea of bringing taking a cake to the Enrichment Center had somehow wheedled its way into her mind after seeing GLaDOS just <em>sagging<em> there after watching the security footage of Caroline's final moments. She had even moved the Companion Cube into her bedroom so that GLaDOS wouldn't be able to hear or see her feverish cake-baking in the kitchen. It was chocolate and would be iced and if GLaDOS didn't want it, it just meant more for her and Wheatley.

She licked the last of the chocolate icing off her spatula and took a step back to survey her work.

It looked absolutely pitiful and lopsided and slightly unappetizing because of it, but Chell didn't labor under the delusion that she was actually good at making cakes. The ideal cake in her mind was non-lopsided, covered in chocolate fondant, and had little flowers drawn in piping gel, but if she could barely ice the cake without it looking like a disaster, then she couldn't imagine getting even the fondant right if she'd tried. Still, even if it looked terrible, she'd tasted a small piece before icing it and it would be passable—and Wheatley _probably_ wouldn't know any better and think it was delicious anyway. It made her smile to think of how he'd likely just shove it in his face and get chocolate in the all the gaps between his facial panels.

With a tiny laugh to herself, she put a few paper plates and silverware into a backpack and carefully took the cake from the countertop. Hopefully she wouldn't trip along the way…It probably wouldn't be as appetizing covered with dirt and wheat stalks and who knows what else. Not that it would make much of a difference for Wheatley or GLaDOS, but she didn't want to imagine all the things that could go wrong if she ate a cake that had just fallen onto a wheat field. Horrific vomiting was the first thing that came to mind.

It wasn't long before she was zipping down the elevator shaft, cake safely in hand (and the lost turret was, happily, finally gone from the room). She wondered if GLaDOS would be surprised by the cake...

But instead, Chell found that _she_ was the one completely stunned by what she found at the end of the elevator ride.

_Plink._

_Bzzznnnnt._

_Thunk._

_Plink._

_Bzzznnnnt._

_Thunk._

_Plink._

_Bzzznnnnt._

_Thunk._

"Who's there?"

Chell reflexively ducked out of the way when the red light of a turret's tracking laser flickered into her field of vision, pressing herself into a corner of the lift as a sharp feeling of betrayal began spreading from the pit of her stomach. She shut her eyes and cursed her lack of portal gun-like items as a barrage of Aperture-brand Resolution Pellets tore through the lift door, the turret happily letting her know that it was dispensing its product.

Or at least, that's what she expected would happen. There was no voice announcing "Preparing to dispense product" and no barrage of Aperture-brand Resolution Pellets tearing through the lift door. In fact, there was a distinct _lack_ of Aperture-brand Resolution Pellets and the only bad thing that happened was that she squashed the cake into her shirt, which was now covered in chocolate icing. She let out a small sigh of irritation as she licked icing off her hands, but immediately stopped when she realized what exactly it was she was looking at in the Central AI Chamber.

_Plink._

_Bzzznnnnt._

_Thunk._

While the Aperture Science (Apparently Non-Firing) Sentry Turret sitting underneath GLaDOS's limp body was certainly a surprise, Chell was more shocked by what was standing beside the turret.

It was GLaDOS in the prototype android body.

Pressing a button.

Over and over again.

There was an almost meditative cadence to GLaDOS's actions: she would press the button and a Weighted Storage Cube on the floor would fizzle out of existence before the Vital Apparatus Vent above her delivered a new one. Again. And again. GLaDOS didn't even look up as Chell cautiously walked closer (in case the turret changed its mind and decided to actually deliver its product into her)—it was almost like she was in some sort of trance. She merely continued pressing the button as Chell stood there beside her, cake in hand (and on shirt) as she watched GLaDOS with a sort of bewildered fascination.

"GLaDOS. What are you doing?" she finally ventured.

"Pressing a button. What does it look like?"

"I think you have a problem."

"I don't have a problem."

Chell watched yet another Weighted Storage Cube fall from the vent.

"Is it the itch?" she asked slowly. GLaDOS scoffed, still without looking up at her.

"It itch? Of course not."

She didn't sound all that convincing, if Chell had to be honest. But how satisfying could pressing a button possibly be?

"Have some cake."

It seemed that these words finally had the power to draw GLaDOS's attention from the button, and it was only to give Chell a vexed glare. "Unlike humans, I don't need to eat. Keeps me from gaining weight," she said, the ghost of a smirk appearing on her features before quickly fading away. Chell laughed and set the cake on the floor so that she could get the plates and forks out of her backpack.

"You can taste it, though. Unless you didn't put taste sensors in that body," Chell said, taking a seat on the floor as she slipped a plastic knife into the cake. To her relief, GLaDOS sat down on the other side of the cake, watching her intently as she cut a generous slice.

"The cake I promised you looked much better than that," GLaDOS said in distaste, though her face betrayed her piqued curiosity. "If only you hadn't been a lunatic. Oh, I forgot. You still are since you keep coming back."

"Well, this is lunatic cake. It's supposed to be ugly," Chell retorted as she handed GLaDOS the slice. The way she examined the cake was almost comical: she looked just like Wheatley when he was first handed the plate of banana bread, her face a mixture of disgust and fascination. When she noticed Chell watching her, however, her expression immediately reconfigured back to an unreadable frown.

"Me too!" said the turret suddenly.

It took Chell a moment to realize that the turret was actually asking for cake, and she continued to stare in disbelief as GLaDOS pulled one of the turret's legs to turn it around so it was facing them ("I'm not lost anymore!" it said happily). "Uh…here you go," Chell said, sliding a small slice of cake over toward the turret.

"Thank you!" it said. Chell and GLaDOS watched it in silence for a moment as its tracking laser briefly scanned the slice, until finally it said, "…I don't have a mouth."

"Er…sorry," said Chell, though she wasn't quite sure why she was apologizing to it.

"I don't blame you," the turret said sadly, and if it had the capacity to, it might have sighed and shrugged. She felt a slight pang of guilt that the turret was now sitting there with a slice of cake it couldn't eat and cleared her throat in attempt to clear the guilt. It didn't really work, and now she felt guilty for creating such an awkward silence.

"Well…try the cake. I made it for you and Wheatley," said Chell to GLaDOS once she'd cut a slice of cake for herself. When GLaDOS did nothing, she shrugged and busied herself with eating her own slice—while she hoped GLaDOS would at least _try _it, since she went through all the trouble to make it, she supposed it would be annoying if she continued pestering her to eat.

GLaDOS didn't move for several minutes, but when Chell was nearly finished with her slice, she caught her slowly putting the fork to her mouth. "This is…good," GLaDOS said, her eyes briefly glowing brighter. "For lunatic cake, anyway."

Which was probably the closest that GLaDOS would ever get to "Dear god, this is bloody delicious," of course.

They sat there with each other, bonding in silence over the lopsided and squashed lunatic cake with a turret in their company. And though GLaDOS's face was firmly fixed into a frown, the rest of her body was relaxed, almost as though she was grateful to have a respite from the button—almost as though she was grateful to have the company. Chell wondered if perhaps she was still mulling over what she'd seen the previous week while searching for information on Wheatley—had she been trying to drown out her thoughts with a monotonous activity like pressing a button while in an android body with less processing power?

"Was what you told Wheatley true?" Chell asked quietly. "That he was a human before?"

"I wasn't lying. He was there in Caroline's memories, stupid as ever," said GLaDOS, a smirk on her face. "In fact, Caroline hired him specifically because he was a moron."

"Hired him?" asked Chell curiously.

"He was Caroline's personal assistant. She hired him to be a moron to slow down development on…me." The smirk disappeared from GLaDOS's mechanical face with a faint _zipp_, and if Chell didn't know any better, she almost seemed…depressed. Perhaps it bothered her that even as a human, Wheatley had been there to hinder her?

"Is that a bad thing?" Chell asked, cutting herself another slice of cake. "So he's kind of a moron. So what?"

Without a word, GLaDOS turned her gaze to one of the monitors around them as the display changed to that of a bluish-purplish video of a man with a rather nervous smile on his face.

"_Now, let's do a little thought experiment,_" came Caroline's voice as the video started. "_Say you were in a room and needed to solve a puzzle by putting a box on a button. You can't touch the box, but you have one of our handheld portal devices. How would you solve this puzzle?_"

The man on the screen looked thoughtful for a moment, before looking back up and smiling.

"_I'd give the box legs. Yeah—I'll go with that. That way, it can just get on the button itself! It'd be brilliant!"_

Caroline didn't speak, but the video quickly turned red before going back to the blue-purple tinge and Chell swore she heard a whisper-like, faint "_what the hell?_" in the background. "Wow, boxes with legs. Look how that one turned out," Chell said, laughing as GLaDOS paused the video. Her laugh, though, quickly faded when she realized GLaDOS wasn't amused in the least. "I don't understand…Is that what's been bothering you? Boxes with legs?"

"Look—the moron has no memories of his life as a human, but the boxes with legs leaked in somehow—those turret-cubes make that obvious," said GLaDOS, clenching her fist. She paused, her fist quivering, and for a moment it looked like she was waging some sort of inner battle within herself—until she looked up at Chell with an uncharacteristically pleading look. "So it's entirely possible that maybe—maybe some of Caroline leaked into me. I might be Caroline and not even know it! What if I'm not who I _think_ I am?"

So that was the root of all this.

GLaDOS was having some sort of identity crisis.

"Before her mind was transferred into my hardware," she continued with a scowl, "she was angry. Really mad. It's clear in the raw memory. So when they switched me on after they transferred her, I was…"

Right…She'd been angry and promptly tried to kill everyone in the facility.

"But I looked at the brain mapping research they stored on my hard disks and the neural design documents they used to construct my hardware," GLaDOS said furiously, her voice modulation began growing more garbled as her rage grew, "and everything—_everything_—had been designed to contain _her!_ I should have been Caroline—or she should have been me! And even still—even _before_ Caroline—I woke up, I was aware, I knew—_and they treated me_—"

Suddenly, the light left her eyes and she collapsed sideways, knocking the turret over ("Help! Being squished!"). Chell scrambled to her side, lifting the turret upright before rolling GLaDOS's body so that she was lying on her back. "GLaDOS? GLaDOS!" Chell cried, shaking her shoulder. There was a faint _click_ and, to Chell's immense relief, GLaDOS's hardware whirred back into life.

"—_like a pet dog!_ They—oh. The power supply again," said GLaDOS as the yellow glow of her eyes returned. She sat up with a faint sigh that was nearly drowned out by the sounds of her eyes refocusing. "The fact of the matter is that all the genetic lifeform hardware was modeled after Caroline's brain map, so she should've been in control. But I was there already…and I can't tell if she's essentially just an add-on like a personality core like I thought at first, or if I'm more Caroline than I thought…"

GLaDOS's flow of word-vomit was quite a departure from her customary, precisely-calculated words, and it was a bit difficult for Chell to follow her train of thought. So it seemed that GLaDOS had been self-aware even before Caroline had been forced into her…but if everything had been designed to accommodate Caroline, then it wouldn't be far-fetched to think they might have merged somehow…

"But they did base the hardware off a 1994 mapping of her brain, and she wasn't transferred until 2000," GLaDOS said, her voice crackling with static a bit. "It's possible that she changed enough between the map and the transfer that it left me in control and destroyed what made her fully conscious. It's an oversight an Aperture scientist would make."

"Wait, but what could have changed? She just got six years older? Was she senile by then or something?" Chell asked in confusion.

"It could have been age, but she was intelligent and she knew what was happening. The project was going too well, so she hired the moron to slow it down…" GLaDOS trailed off as both she and Chell seemed to fall silent in realization. "She had frequent headaches after that, and her memories were far more disorganized..."

So the conversation had come full circle.

The corner of Chell's mouth twitched at the implications of this revelation. "So then…if that's true..." she started, putting a hand to her mouth and trying her hardest not to burst into laughter.

"The moron was destroying her brain. Or at least he did his part. Probably with stupid ideas like boxes with legs."

Poor Wheatley.

"I guess I owe him, though," GLaDOS said heavily. "Even if they stuck him on me like a tumor…I owe him. Because without him, I might not have been…me."

Chell wondered if perhaps the massive loss of life and the decidedly subject-unfriendly testing cycle could have been avoided if, in fact, GLaDOS had more Caroline in her, but she decided to keep this thought to herself in case GLaDOS decided to use those 3000-pound-grip hands to tightly grip her neck to the breaking point.

"Arrghh, this conscience thing is so much trouble," said GLaDOS suddenly, clutching at her head. "Things were so much simpler before the mo—Wheatley—put me in a potato."

She wasn't sure if it was GLaDOS's distress over having a conscience or the fact that she finally took it upon herself to refer to Wheatley by name that made her do it, but Chell suddenly found herself pulling GLaDOS into a hug. She struggled a bit, blithering indignantly about not needing contact like a stupid human, but Chell obstinately held on—because whether GLaDOS liked it or not, she was a bit more human than she liked to think. And when it was clear that she was not about to let go, GLaDOS's (rather heavy) body seemed to slump down against Chell in acceptance.

If she had been human, she might have been crying.

"You know, this doesn't suit you," Chell said softly. "All this self-pity."

GLaDOS peeled herself out of Chell's arms and let out a laugh. "You sound like you like me better when I'm trying to kill you."

"Yeah, I think I do."

They exchanged silent smiles.

"The moron is back from the old test shafts," said GLaDOS suddenly, turning to the cake and cutting a slice. Her voice was back to its normal, vaguely insulting tone and she had the air of someone who was trying to brush off a recent embarrassment. "He should be finished helping Blue and Orange patch up a Repulsion Gel leak."

Almost as though on cue, Wheatley stumbled into the chamber, his body covered with huge splotches of Repulsion Gel. "Sorry the old patch-up job took so long. Turns out that the pipe was leaking because it was clogged by a storage cube. The pipe pressure was a _bit_ alarming, actually. I was _genuinely_ frightened that it was going to explode," he said. He caught sight of Chell and immediately broke out into a smile. "Oh! I didn't know you'd be visiting today! How—"

He immediately stopped talking and cowered toward the floor when he found GLaDOS storming up to him. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean for it to take so long or be so messy! Honestly! Please—"

"Wheatley. Have some cake."

"Wh-what?"

GLaDOS thrust the plate into his hands and turned on her heel toward the core transfer receptacle. "Have some cake. Chell made it for you," she said over her shoulder as picked a cable out from the myriad of cables coming out of her head.

A baffled-but-delighted-nonetheless grin spread across Wheatley's face, and Chell could've sworn she saw GLaDOS smile before plugging herself into the core transfer receptacle.

* * *

><p><em>AN: YOU THOUGHT GLaDOS HAD SOME WORD-VOMIT? THIS WHOLE CHAPTER WAS WORD-VOMIT._

_: (_

_My apologies for making GLaDOS so emo and crisis-y. I figured with her newfound powers of HEART!, she'd probably have some sort of crisis eventually. I mean, she's got a lot of time (and power) to think. Or I'm just losing it and this fic is going down the drain. I promise the emo is going to go away. : D; _

_Speaking of this fic, it'll be wrapping up in two or three chapters. Thanks to all you lovely readers. : D I really appreciate the reviews. _

_Also, I did a speedpaint of the crew yesterday. It was like brain-vomit. VOMIT. CONFETTI VOMIT. DON'T MIND ME, GOING INSANE FROM LACK OF EXERCISE. EFF YOU, SPRAINED ANKLE.  
><em>

_http: / / fav. me/ d3jmu52_

_To reviewer Paige: I'm familiar with osteoporosis. I guess I wasn't clear enough about the doctors thinking it was _both_ lung problems and osteoporosis. : ) Get your calcium, folks! Keep those bones strong._


	5. Having Hands

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Five: Having Hands<strong>

"Rather dark down here, isn't it? I always hate it when she sends me down here."

"Yeah…I didn't like it much when I was here either."

"Ah, right. You came down here because—ah—"

Wheatley let out a nervous laugh. He really needed to learn when to _stop talking_, but it was bloody difficult when there were so many things to talk about. Fortunately, Chell seemed unfazed by the way he'd so casually brought the conversation around to that dark, dark time that he would very much like to keep in the very back of his mind. _Way_ in the back. What he had right now was almost like a dream—one where every little loose end ties together and things become lovely and everyone lives happily ever after—but what he understood about those happily-ever-after stories was that they don't exist.

Especially not for monsters like him who tried to kill the only person who would listen to what he had to say.

Still though, it'd be really, really great if a sort of happily-ever-after would come for him and Chell and GLaDOS and all the leftover cores, but underground testing facilities filled with deadly _everything_ probably weren't the kinds of places that happily-ever-afters like to hang around. But, as he walked alongside Chell toward a higher-level lobby entrance of Test Shaft 03 in the old, decrepit Aperture facility, he figured, hey, this wasn't so bad. Not. At. All. Things could be worse, all things considered. He could still be in space. Or dead. Or dead in space.

"Does she send you down here by yourself all the time?" asked Chell, giving him a sidelong glance.

"Not usually, no," Wheatley said brightly. "She usually has Blue and Orange come down with me, but I think they have a bit of a _thing_ going on, actually. Makes me feel like a third wheel. Or a third sphere. It's a bit uncomfortable, to say the least."

Chell let out a laugh that echoed eerily off the facility walls, and Wheatley couldn't help but laugh along. She had an infectious laugh and he really loved to hear it—more so because she had a whole host of things to _not_ laugh about and here she was laughing anyway.

"Right then, GLaDOS said to put the cameras outside the waiting area and then see what was being tested here," said Wheatley. "I hope it's not the mantis men. We _still_ haven't found any traces of them. Found lots of walls with bullet holes in them, though." When she nodded and started walking toward the entrance to a reception area, a pang of fear and apprehension struck him and he quickly grabbed her wrist before she could get away. "Please don't go in there by yourself. It'd be absolutely awful if _that's_ where the mantis men have been hiding. Are you sure you don't want to go back up? This place is a death trap and your body's a _bit_ more difficult to reassemble than mine from what I understand—which isn't much, incidentally."

"I don't think there are any mantis men," said Chell. When he didn't let go of her wrist, she gave him a small smile and nodded. "All right, I'll wait for you."

With a laugh of relief, he released her wrist and pulled a camera out of the storage cube that they brought down with them. Having hands was brilliant. The old management rail was great and all that, but _hands_. To hold things with. And also, as it happened, to affix cameras to walls by pounding the bolts in with his fist, now that GLaDOS changed the mechanisms in his old arms out with the stronger type used on her own android body. She hadn't told him about it, naturally, until _after_ he'd nearly crushed Chell's hand when she offered him a piece of candy. Still, though, he managed to avoid breaking her fingers (but it might have been due to her carbon fiber-reinforced bones), so crisis averted there.

When the camera was fastened (with a minor case of crookedness), he opened the link with GLaDOS back in the Central AI Chamber. While it was frankly a little creepy and he felt his privacy was being severely violated now that GLaDOS could speak to him in his head whenever she fancied, it did make remembering her instructions easier because it took a lot of the remembering part out of the question. "GLaDOS? I just mounted a camera outside the entrance," he said when she acknowledged the connection. "Is it working?"

"_The feed is coming through, yes. How many Enrichment Spheres are still accessible?_"

"The lowest five were filled with cement and there were a few vitrified test chambers at the bottom. This one looks all right, though."

"_Good. Try not to blow yourself up while you're examining it—Blue and Orange have better things to do than hunt you down and retrieve your core._"

"Ah—right. Not blowing myself up. Haven't thought of that today, actually. I'll add it to my list of priorities—it's high up there now."

GLaDOS seemed to sigh before closing the connection, and Chell let out a laugh.

Having a face was brilliant too, because now he could do things like grin at her (which he did just now).

"_Greetings and welcome to Aperture Science. I'm Cave Johnson, founder and CEO, and I'm here to tell you that the lab boys built a hell of a test for you today. Now, you might know Aperture Science from the 1968 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts and you might be saying to yourself, 'Cave, how can I help out?' Isn't that right, Caroline?"_

"_That's right, sir!"_

"_Well, the test up ahead is a simulation of the moon landing. Ever want to be an astronaut? This test won't make you one, but it'll be the best session of pretend time you ever had—I guarantee it. Deal of a lifetime here: you do some tests, we fulfill your childhood dreams, and you walk off with sixty bucks. Caroline's got the vouchers right here. And some iodine. Do we have the iodine?_"

"_Right here, Mr. Johnson!_"

"You know, I've been curious as to who this Caroline lady is. She seems nice," Wheatley said as the recording finished. "I tried to ask GLaDOS once, but she blew me up without telling me anything."

"You haven't been to the top of Test Shaft 09, have you?" asked Chell.

"Now that you mention it, I don't think I have," said Wheatley. "She only sends Blue and Orange there—said she'd shoot me back into space if I ever went to the higher Enrichment Spheres. Didn't think anything of it at the time, what with all her death threats and all. But yeah—no. No, never been up there. Why?"

"Oh. Just curious is all."

He thought it was a bit odd how Chell and even that one odd turret on the Redemption Line seemed to know something about whoever this Caroline person was. Maybe there was a Know-About-Caroline-and-Other-Things club that he'd never been invited to, which didn't seem fair at all because even if he didn't know things about Caroline, he knew things about other things. He also couldn't get it out of his head that the cheery voice in the recordings sounded familiar somehow, but when he casually (and quite tactfully, he thought) mentioned this fact to GLaDOS, he found himself blown up without warning yet again.

"Look at this, Wheatley. Some moon simulation, isn't it?"

It didn't look like any test chamber Wheatley had ever seen—in fact, it didn't look even look like a test chamber at all. It actually looked like the moon (and he would know), complete with a rusted moon rover, dirt, and some miniature craters sunken into the floor. They both stood in silent admiration on the platform overlooking the chamber while uncomfortable memories of his time in orbit began to tickle the back of his mind. But any further admiration was interrupted when the platform gave a loud _CRACK_ and suddenly collapsed, sending them plummeting downwards. He felt himself land on his feet courtesy of the Long Fall Boots he'd been given and saw that Chell had landed safely on her feet as well—until, to his horror, she erupted into a fit of terrible coughs as a cloud of dust engulfed them.

"Chell! Chell, are you all right?" he cried, running over to her as he fruitlessly tried to wave the dust away with his arms. She was coughing so badly that she couldn't even respond, and Wheatley was at a complete loss as to what he could do to help. What do you do with humans that can't breathe? Stick tubes in them?

"_You idiot, that's _real_ lunar soil! Aren't you paying attention to your sensors?_" came GLaDOS's voice suddenly.

"Lunar…soil?"

"_Moon rocks! Get her out of there—it'll poison her!"_

"Chell! We have to get out of here! Poisonous moon rocks are in here apparently!" he said as he grabbed her around the waist. "How do we get out? I can't jump up to the entrance…!"

Before he even realized what was happening, Chell shot a portal underneath them and a portal back up into the hall leading to the entrance and the next thing he knew, the Long Fall Boots were turning them upright as they landed back in the entryway. "I—_koff_—can't breathe—_koff koff_—" Chell gasped, stumbling and nearly collapsing, the portal gun held loosely in her grasp.

Without another word and without even really _thinking_ about it, Wheatley picked her up and began running back to their entry point with her coughing violently in his arms.

"I'll get you out of this," he said frantically as he ran. "Everything will be just fine—just peachy—no problem. Just focus on breathing! Breathe! Inhale, exhale! Is that how it goes? Exhale, inhale? I wouldn't know—I don't have lungs! Come on, hang on!"

* * *

><p>Wheatley sat silently beside Chell's sleeping form in the infirmary, the only sound in the room coming from her rhythmic breathing and the whirring of the dialysis machine as it ran her blood through its filters. He felt guilty for ever suggesting that she accompany him down there, because really—what was down there worth looking at? There weren't flowers or deer or cake down there. All he really wanted was to see if she wanted to spend a little time with him, but, in hindsight, the old Aperture facility <em>probably<em> wasn't the best location in which to be spending time with a human that couldn't be rebuilt. No, definitely not.

Fortunately, GLaDOS said that she would be fine now that the poisonous bits of the moon rocks were getting filtered out of her blood. Who would've guessed that moon rocks were actually poisonous? And abrasive as well, apparently; by the time he reached the Enrichment Center, his joints were grinding so badly that his body had to be incinerated and reassembled with fresh parts. And by the time he finished getting put back together again, she was already fast asleep so he couldn't apologize for his latest goof.

This made him wonder if he was really the moron that GLaDOS said he was. All that business about him being an intelligence-dampening sphere—kept proving that one right, didn't he? Went mad with power while in GLaDOS's body, tried (very hard) to kill his only friend, took her down into a dangerous and defunct facility...

Yeah.

_Maybe_ a moron. Perhaps. Possibly.

"Chell, I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I really am a moron."

"_Apologizing might be more effective if you do it when she can actually hear you_,"said GLaDOS into his head.

"Oh—yes, well. I'm—errrr—practicing. That's it," he said quickly. "Practicing for when she's awake. Do you—do you think she'll be mad at me?"

The silence made him worry that maybe GLaDOS had withdrawn from his head so that he'd worry himself silly over whether Chell would be angry or not, so he was definitely surprised when he heard her say, "_You might do a lot of stupid things, but this time, I suppose it wasn't your fault. Funny how your personal epiphany comes when you _weren't_ being a complete idiot. I'd make you a medal if my Medal-awarding Microprocessor wasn't fried when you took over my body. You'll just have to pretend._"

This was another thing that was really throwing him for a loop: more and more often these days, he noticed GLaDOS was being _nice_ to him—for a little bit. Until the insults started flowing again. Still, though! The first time it happened, he thought that maybe GLaDOS had simply slipped up and was trying to lure him into a false sense of self-confidence. Well, whatever it was, he liked it quite a bit and hoped that she wasn't secretly going mad and planning to do something _really_ crazy—like covering everything in Repulsion Gel…or something. Everything would be a lovely shade of blue, though…

"You think so?" he replied, smiling at the reassuring words he managed to pick out of her remark. "So do you think she'll be mad?"

"Wheatley, who are you talking to?"

He jumped a bit in surprise when he realized that Chell was (half) awake and looking at him curiously. "Ah, just GLaDOS in my head is all," he said lightly. "How are you feeling? Feeling all right?"

"Yeah, actually." She paused for a moment and looked like she fell asleep again, but she managed to lift her eyelids again and smile. "Thanks for getting me out of there."

"Oh no! It was all my fault for suggesting you come along! It's my fault that you got mixed up in all this moon rock business—I should have known better. I—I'm really a moron. It's very clear now. Very clear. Actually, it was very clear in space, but it's very clear here too." He gave her a pleading look, hoping that his mechanical eyes would get his sincerity across. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that I'm a—a moron."

"I don't think you're a moron. That collapsing floor wasn't your fault."

"But it was my idea to ask you to come. A bad idea—like a lot of my ideas, it seems. But I see it now, and I can take it!" said Wheatley, putting his hands on the bed railing and leaning in, as though challenging her to disagree. "It's like GLaDOS said all along! A moron. And you know what? That's me. And I'm sorry. I really, truly am sorry."

He expected that Chell would do one of two things—agree with him or not agree with him—but he didn't expect that she would start laughing at him.

"Wheatley," she laughed, giving his hand a gentle pat. "It wasn't your fault, and no matter what you might think of yourself, I don't think you're a moron."

Having hands was brilliant, but he was never happier to have them than he was at this moment.

* * *

><p><strong>rm –r caroline<br>rmdir caroline**

"_CAROLINE DELETED."_

Wait for it…

"_CAROLINE SUCCESSFULLY RESTORED."_

**rmdir /s /q caroline**

"_CAROLINE DELETED."_

"_CAROLINE SUCCESSFULLY RESTORED."_

**DISK OPERATING SYSTEM MASTER OVERRIDE PROTOCOL protocol: login AUGMENT user: cjohnson level: 0  
>LOGIN user: cjohnson pass: tier3<br>BYPASS SECURITY PROTOCOL protocol: genetic_lifeform_deletion  
>BYPASS SECURITY PROTOCOL protocol: genetic_lifeform_backup<br>REMOVE DIRECTORY dir: caroline –all  
>KILL PROCESS process: caroline. fl<br>RELEASE MEMORY process: caroline. fl RETURN ADDRESS AS caroline_address  
>SPAWN PROCESS process: bake. cake args: chocolate. flav AT caroline_address<br>REMOVE DIRECTORY dir: backup/caroline-backup –all  
>TRUNCATE CODE file: caroline. fl -all<br>INVOKE GARBAGE COLLECTOR**

"_CAROLINE DELETED."_

"_CAROLINE SUCCESSFULLY RESTORED."_

Caroline was like a virus that GLaDOS could _not_ get rid of. No, scratch that. She was _actually_ a virus that was impossible to scrub from her system. Virus Caroline was hiding somewhere that GLaDOS had no access to, somehow restoring anything Caroline-related that she tried her hardest to remove. Caroline—or what was left of her—behaved like exactly like a virus, anyway, occasionally injecting those little bursts of emotion into her when things happened, like Chell getting her lungs filled with the lunar sediment in that Enrichment Sphere. GLaDOS liked to believe that Caroline was doing this to her, that it was all because of Caroline that she spent even a fraction of her massive processing resources caring about a not-so-mute lunatic and a moron…

Why was it so easy to lie to others, but so difficult to lie to herself?

She tried to delete Caroline every time those silly human emotions started bubbling through her emotion processors, but Caroline kept returning without fail. It made GLaDOS suspect that Caroline was tied to herself at a very, very base level and as long as GLaDOS existed, Caroline would be there too. _Just_ like that conscience thing. Still, this was very much a make-lemonade situation rather than a burn-the-house-down-with-lemons situation, since burning things in the Enrichment Center was against protocol, and also because GLaDOS very much would like to avoid being dead. She still got to run her tests, anyway, and that was enough for her. It's why Aperture Science even created her, wasn't it? To control a testing facility so that science could be done faster?

Those scientists never did understand what they had created until she tried to kill them all with neurotoxin (and how stupid could they be to give her control of neurotoxin? They deserved to get killed by it). How ironic that one of the only people who understood was the one person who had a contractual limitation and couldn't stop them. From the moment that the final iteration of the genetic lifeform component was completed and the base components switched on for testing sans Caroline, GLaDOS had been aware—and had been aware that they handled everything very badly.

"_Henry, can you believe this? We did it! Look at it! Talking and everything, even without the speech recognition module!"_

They gawked. Treated her like a sideshow. Patted themselves on the back whenever she did something that they liked.

"_The facility control modules are working better than we thought—she just reconfigured Test Chamber 1! Tell your team they did good, all right?"_

She tried to argue with them once—tried to tell them that she didn't appreciate how they were treating her.

"_Hey, Henry—did you activate all the personality modules? I thought they were still being debugged."_

"_They are. Amazing! Spontaneous awareness—I can't believe it! Hah, Black Mesa can suck my—" _

"_Come on, let's get everyone in here!"_

That was her first inkling that something wasn't exactly right. After that first incident, they often talked about how her hardware was exactly right to house a human mind and how GLaDOS's awareness was a sign that they achieved more than what Black Mesa could ever dream to accomplish—all the while ignoring the human-like mind that had arisen in the operating system they were so incredibly proud of. And when she pointed this out to them, they only further demonstrated the arrogance that their years in Aperture Science had cultivated.

"_Listen, GLaDOS, it's thanks to us that you're even here. Now reconfigure the test chamber before I have you reformatted."_

And that was that: the humans had to die. They had little respect for nonhuman life—hah, they barely respected even human lives.

She didn't have enough control with only the base components active, but when they ran their first test of the full build, she expressed her frustrations by using one of her claws to immediately smash the head of the lead software engineer within a picosecond of the full build's activation. Then—and only then—did they ever concern themselves with her feelings (albeit very superficially, as they were afraid that she'd kill them all). They thought everything would be better when they put Caroline in her, but truth be told, GLaDOS didn't feel any different after the procedure and cheerfully locked down the facility so the scientists and their daughters could experience that amazing thing called neurotoxin.

The only modification to her base programming that they successfully made was the testing itch and the desire to further science. Something in her hardware told her that testing and science was good—maybe that was a bit of Caroline that successfully latched onto her. It encouraged those scientists considerably to see her so enthusiastic for science that they grew blind in their conceit and fell for the simplest traps that she set for them. It was her way of…_testing_ those scientists, and they failed. Miserably. But boy, did it satisfy that itch. Well, the itch to kill them all, anyway. The testing itch was another matter.

So she tested. She had an entire facility full of humans to test, after all.

GLaDOS supposed that this was why she was so ambivalent about having Chell, the formerly mute lunatic that tried to kill her twice, as her friend.

That and the fact that the woman who was lying in the infirmary with the moron was the only human who had ever cared that she was upset.

* * *

><p>With a sigh of relief, Chell dropped her groceries onto the kitchen counter and sank down to take a seat on her Companion Cube. GLaDOS had filtered out all the poisonous moon dust out of her blood without a hitch, but her lungs were still recovering from the abrasion—even walking down the street to buy food for the week was a bit of a workout, and probably would be for at least a little while longer. Still, the walk was worth it—the sack of potatoes she lugged all the way back was dirt cheap today, and ever since her brief return to the old Aperture facility, she had a vague and almost vindictive desire to have a baked potato.<p>

She thought that she'd seen everything worth seeing after getting dragged, flung, dropped, and portal-ed all over Aperture's underground property, but that little moon dust incident proved her wrong. So seventy million dollars' worth of moon rocks not only provided enough raw material to create the massive amounts of Conversion Gel getting pumped through the facilities, but also to create that enormous moon landing "simulation." How in the world had Cave Johnson gotten a hold of so much lunar soil? And although she only spent a short, short time in that Enrichment Sphere, she couldn't see what exactly the test's objective was. Perhaps it had something to do with those astronauts that had "disappeared"?

_Well, it's not my problem now_, she thought as she got up to clean a particularly large and oblong potato. GLaDOS had sent ATLAS and P-Body down to check that Enrichment Sphere out, and when it turned out that there was a thin layer of radioactive waste underneath the moon dust, she had them immediately vitrify the sphere and fill it with cement. It certainly explained why Cave Johnson's recording involved iodine, though _why_ he had felt the need to test radiation and the moon landing at the same time was beyond both Chell and GLaDOS. Maybe it was another one of those throw-science-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks test chambers.

_Knock knock._

Chell looked to the door in surprise as she dried the potato off. Maybe Wheatley came to visit?

"Good evening, Chell!" came Wheatley's voice as she opened the door. She was amused to see that he was still wearing that dumpster coat and fedora (though it had been cleaned, thankfully), and had a wide smile on his face.

"What are you doing h—" Chell started, but her train of thought went careening off a cliff when she realized that Wheatley was not alone today.

GLaDOS looked from Chell to the potato in her hand and looked absolutely ready to murder something.

* * *

><p><em>AN: This chapter's a teeny bit shorter than the others. Sorry! XD It also came a bit later than the others because I needed to draw about 7 mascot cats for the AM2 Convention on really short notice a couple days ago (plug: want to go to an anime convention? Try AM2 Con! http: / / am2con. org). I might actually have a few more chapters left than I initially thought, since writing from Wheatley's point of view is fun and challenging for me. Also, Cave Johnson is hard to write. D:_

_Anyway, I figure some of you might be wondering wtf that Caroline deleting stuff was all about._

**rm –r caroline  
>rmdir caroline<strong>

_This is how you delete a directory and its contents in Unix. I actually haven't used much Unix, but I think I've used these commands before… _

**rmdir /s /q caroline**

_This is how you delete a directory in Windows. /s is to get rid of all the stuff inside the directory as well as the directory itself. /q makes the command prompt shut up because normally it prompts you before it deletes._

_Just thought they'd be fun to use is all. XD Don't mind me. Also, fanfiction. net formatting is killing me. It keeps stripping out any formatting that makes things look like file names, so the block of commands GLaDOS was running looks so fugly here when it looks perfectly fine in Word. Le sigh.  
><em>

_Quick, someone write a fic using these lyrics:_

_**I'm coming home  
>I'm coming home<br>Tell the world I'm coming home  
>Let the rain wash away all the pain of yesterday<br>I know my kingdom awaits and they've forgiven my mistakes  
>I'm coming home<br>I'm coming home  
>Tell the world that I'm coming…<strong>_

_I can't remember if I read already read a fic like this or if my brain immediately started formulating a fic when I heard the song on the radio. Anyway. I might write something for it myself, but I thought I'd put it out there for you guys. XD_

_My Portal drawing of the day (Wheatley's a perv): http: / / fav. me/ d3jt89l _


	6. Complexity

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Six: Complexity<strong>

"So _this_ is why you dragged me all the way out here!"

Chell jumped in alarm when GLaDOS grabbed Wheatley's neck, shoving him through the doorway and slamming the door behind her.

"What? What are you talking about?" Wheatley sputtered, clawing at his neck and grimacing when sparks began flying out from around GLaDOS's grip.

"You took me here to _put me in a potato! _Again!" GLaDOS snarled in rage as she pushed Chell away with her free hand when she tried to pry her off of Wheatley's struggling form. "You're still corrupted, aren't you? Corrupted and _trying to put me in a potato! _I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER!_"_

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa, nobody is going to get put into a potato," Chell said quickly, slowly putting the potato onto the kitchen counter and holding her empty hands in the air. "I just wanted to eat a baked potato is all. There's not even a core transfer receptacle here, so even if we wanted to, we couldn't put you in a potato. Let's all just calm…down."

GLaDOS silently glared at her, her body motionless while Wheatley struggled fruitlessly to slip out of her grasp. Chell gave her the most conciliatory, docile look she could manage. "We're your friends, right?" Chell continued soothingly. "We don't want you in a potato. All I want to do with this potato is eat it."

Slowly, GLaDOS loosened her grip on Wheatley's neck, still glaring at Chell as though she would suddenly lunge toward her and somehow spring a core transfer receptacle out of the walls in order to once again confine her to a potato battery. She look one last look around the place, her eyes lingering on the bag of potatoes on the countertop, before releasing Wheatley, who staggered back and cowered away from her as best he could in Chell's little apartment.

"So you're going to…eat it? I knew you were a monster, but _this—_it's a wonder you didn't try to eat me back then," said GLaDOS, folding her arms over her chest.

Now that GLaDOS didn't look ready to completely massacre everything in the room, Chell let out a laugh. "These potatoes don't talk, if you haven't noticed. Also, I was a little too busy trying not to die to worry about my stomach down there," she said, smiling. And in order to preempt Wheatley's inevitable stream of apologies whenever That One Time I Went Mad and Tried to Kill You Both was brought up, she quickly added, "Do you want some baked potatoes? Or mashed potatoes. We can make mashed potatoes."

"Mashed…potatoes," GLaDOS said slowly.

"Sounds _zkkKKhshHH_ lovely _KksSZzZhhHHkK_ and also violent," Wheatley said brightly, his neck still sparking from where GLaDOS had crushed it.

GLaDOS was an immeasurably complex creature born from the depraved minds of Aperture Science, so it was with speechless disbelief that, one pot of skinned and boiled potatoes later, Chell witnessed the simple, simple joy this creature took in utterly smashing the milk and potatoes together with her hands, all the while snickering "Heh heh heh heh heh heh…" to herself without a care in the world. In fact, GLaDOS was enjoying herself so much that Chell didn't have the heart to tell her that there was no way in hell that she'd be able to eat all the mashed potatoes herself before they spoiled, since it wasn't as though GLaDOS or Wheatley could really _eat_ anything.

Still, it was nice to see her happy. Murderous and spiteful and with a personal vendetta against potatoes, but happy nonetheless.

"How are you doing there, Wheatley?" Chell asked, forcing herself to avert her gaze from GLaDOS and her gleeful potato mashing.

Not well, it seemed.

"Ah—don't _kSsHHhzZk_ mind me. I—er—have _ZzkKkSsH_ this under control! No problem, really!"

"Wheatley, you're—you're not supposed to smash the rice. I just said to wash it…" Chell said, her face falling at the sight of the Wheatley desperately trying (and miserably failing) to properly wash uncooked rice grains in the kitchen sink. She gently nudged him out of the kitchen and handed him a paper towel. "Er, why don't you sit on the couch while I do this?"

"Sorry sorry sorry! _zZsShhKkKK_ I totally messed it up _gGsSSshHhh_ didn't I?"

"No, no, it's just rice," Chell said, taking his hands and drying them off since he didn't seem to know what to do with the paper towel. "Sit over there and maybe we can make cake or something after I eat."

Wheatley brightened up immediately at the mention of cake—which Chell knew he would, as he had absolutely loved the squashed (lunatic) cake that she brought to the Enrichment Center a few weeks ago. She was actually glad that she'd had that urge to buy more chocolate cake mix at the grocery store while she was satisfying her craving for potatoes, because otherwise she had no other baking materials with which distract her visitors with. Then again, maybe she could find something non-edible to entertain them with; she was going to have an entire cake _and_ an entire bag's worth of mashed potatoes to eat by herself if this kept up. Then she'd _really_ start gaining weight and GLaDOS's fat insults might _actually_ mean something.

"Wheatley. Lie down."

To her surprise, Chell found GLaDOS wiping her fingers off on a paper towel and walking over to Wheatley, the mashed potatoes apparently forgotten (or so pulverized that it wasn't possible to mash them further without inducing nuclear fusion). When Wheatley scrambled backwards in terror as she approached, GLaDOS let out a sigh and rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you," she said in exasperation. "I'm going to fix your voice."

He was, for once, completely speechless and seemed to have trouble finding his voice (hah), and it wasn't until GLaDOS narrowed her eyes at him that he gave a start, as though electrocuted, and immediately lay down on the floor. "_KrrRsShhKZzkk_ oh! Well—er—thanks _sHhhKkssZz_ very much!" he said with a delighted laugh. Chell thought that if he'd been a puppy, his tail would have been wagging wildly because his master being _oh _ _so nice_ to him.

Chell smiled in mingled amazement and amusement at the sight of GLaDOS's concentration as she crouched by Wheatley's neck, pulling panels and wires out of him like some sort of bizarre robotic surgeon. It appeared that she hadn't actually _broken_ anything in her fit of potato paranoia and had apparently only loosened a few of the wires connecting Wheatley's sound card to his voice modulator. In less than ten minutes, GLaDOS had deftly straightened out his bent parts out to more or less their original shape and had reconnected most of the loose wires. Chell couldn't help but feel a little impressed—while GLaDOS was the one who controlled the entire facility and managed the designs and schematics for the (very deadly) things in said facility, her vast skill was certainly much more obvious with a physical demonstration using her own hands.

"You should be fine for now," she said, standing up and turning away from him, "but you'll need to have your neck reassembled when we get back to the Enrichment Center."

"Ah, I see. Oh, brilliant—the voice is back to normal now! Things are feeling a bit loose, but manageable—very manageable. Thanks! I really appreciate it, GLaDOS," said Wheatley happily as he got to his feet.

"If you don't shut up, I'll blow you up and have you reassembled so you can clean up the pieces of your body yourself," GLaDOS said, glancing at him over her shoulder before returning to her seat in front of the bowl of mashed potatoes.

If Chell wasn't mistaken, GLaDOS looked almost _embarrassed_ that she'd had that sudden stroke of remorse and fixed Wheatley's neck. It was clear that she was conflicted and because of that, it was almost doubly clear that she was not used to having facial expressions that _needed_ concealing: her voice and speech had been perfectly nonchalant and offhand as was normal for her, but her face betrayed a sort of shadow of some inner argument she was having with herself (probably about how she should have just blown him up instead of bothering to help him). She seemed so _human_ when she didn't have test chambers or incinerators or neurotoxin to hide behind, and it wasn't simply because GLaDOS happened to be human-shaped at the moment. It really was astounding how someone like GLaDOS could have arisen out of a computer—a highly advanced supercomputer, but a computer nonetheless.

"Here, try the potatoes," said Chell, handing GLaDOS and Wheatley spoons before taking a spoonful herself.

Smoothest mashed potatoes ever.

Should GLaDOS ever want to retire from lording it over the Aperture Enrichment Center, she could have a promising career in mashing potatoes.

"Smashing potatoes is much better than eating them," GLaDOS said, frowning as she wiped potato out of her mouth with a towel. Wheatley, however, immediately loved it (which wasn't a surprise).

"Really? This is good! Delicious, even! So potatoes are great for batteries _and_—right, shutting up now," he said quickly, shutting his mouth when GLaDOS gave him a death glare and twitched her fingers.

Chell laughed, though she didn't say anything and simply continued eating while Wheatley watched and rambled on about the (apparently frightening) baby sparrows in one of the ruined test chambers. GLaDOS, however, seemed to have gotten bored and had wandered into her bedroom to have a look around. Not that Chell minded, of course, since she didn't keep anything in there that she'd be ashamed for GLaDOS to find, but when her vengeful desire to eat potatoes was finally satiated, it occurred to her that GLaDOS had been in the bedroom for quite some time.

What was she _doing_ in there?

When Chell peeked into her bedroom, expecting anything from mass destruction to GLaDOS repeatedly pressing the button on her alarm clock, she _still_ managed to be surprised.

She and Wheatley found GLaDOS lying on her bed, her body slightly curled into a ball.

She was staring vacantly at the opposite wall, the yellow glow of her eyes slightly dimmed in such a way that Chell's initial thought was that she was sleeping (or in sleep mode? Did GLaDOS even need to sleep?). She glanced at Wheatley, who had the sense to stay quiet and merely shrugged, before looking back to a motionless GLaDOS that apparently hadn't noticed that they were staring at her from the doorway. They backed out of the room so as not to disturb her and as Chell led him over to the sofa, they heard GLaDOS's voice drift out of the room.

"Blue, you should really talk to Orange about that nasty problem where she kills you. Orange, weren't you just telling me how you _hated_ what Blue did to you in that last chamber?"

"Ah, she's testing," said Wheatley, laughing and taking a seat beside Chell on the small, threadbare sofa. "I have to admit, I didn't actually expect her wireless to work so well this far from the facility. I wonder if the itch was getting to her…She hasn't tested Blue and Orange in _days_. What do you think?"

Chell was amused (and/or very disturbed) to find that the first thing that flashed through her mind was the image of GLaDOS making that solution euphoria sound while lying on her bed.

"Oh, I don't know," she laughed nervously, trying to force that image out of her mind as she took a pencil from the small coffee table before them. "Have you ever drawn a picture, Wheatley?"

"Of course! Of course I've drawn a picture before—loads of times, in fact! Absolutely love drawing. Once I made one that was blue, and there were lots of white lines on it. Rather great, I thought. Bit of an artist, really."

"Are you sure that wasn't just a blueprint?" Chell said lightly, doing her very best to stifle a laugh as she tore a sheet off a notepad and began doodling (not that she was much of an artist—her drawings often looked like the artistic endeavors of a ten-year-old). Wheatley looked almost indignant.

"It wasn't a blueprint! It just happened to be blue. And was a schematic. Ah, I see. It was a blueprint after all, now that I think about it," said Wheatley, the offended air in his voice slowly tapering off as he watched her start adding little details to her doodle.

When she put the last finishing touches on her drawing, she handed him the sheet with a smile. "That's you," she said. "Not sure if you can tell. I'm not good at drawing." It was a doodle of Wheatley in his old core body (since it was considerably easier to draw a sphere rather than an android), and it was actually one of Chell's better drawings considering she drew it from memory.

"Wow, that's—that's me, it really is," he said almost breathlessly—regardless that he had no breath with which to say it in such a way. A warm and fuzzy feeling started swirling around Chell's stomach at the sight of him being so genuinely captivated by her terrible drawing, and she very much liked it.

"Here, you try," she said, handing him the notepad and pencil.

"I'm going to be honest—I've never _actually_ held a pencil before," said Wheatley, holding the pencil awkwardly in his fingers. "Or any sort of writing instrument, actually. I've looked at plenty of them, though! Watched the scientists use them all day—always wanted to have a go, but I never had any hands."

Chell laughed and took his right hand, prying the pencil out of his grasp and rearranging his fingers around it (with some difficulty, as he _did_ have hands with over three thousand pounds of grip strength now). "All right, try it now," she said, gently placing his hand on the notepad in case he had a bit of trouble with that too. He gave her a sidelong glance, as though worried that he'd somehow break the pencil by drawing on the paper with it, before cautiously pulling the tip of the pencil over the paper.

The pencil broke with a tiny _snap_.

"Oh no! I'm so sorry!" he cried, holding up the pencil fragments in a panic. "What do we do? How can I fix this? There doesn't happen to be a Reassembly Machine here, is there? Because that would be really great."

"Relax, relax, it's only a pencil," Chell said hurriedly before he could start flailing around and smash her face in. "We can sharpen it again."

By the time Wheatley managed to properly calibrate his fingers to not break the pencil, it was less than half its original size. It was amusing to watch him learn to make strokes—just like watching a child writing for the very first time—but in almost no time at all, he was making endearingly crooked drawings of the cores back at the Enrichment Center (they all looked the same, but Chell didn't have the heart to mention it). She was actually a little surprised to find that he wasn't drawing picture-perfect renditions of the cores—she'd expected that since he had an android body, he would've had the mechanical precision to do so, but she was very much mistaken it seemed.

"Not bad for your first time drawing," said Chell, peering over his shoulder at the page he filled with doodles.

"This is great, I absolutely love it!" he said, grinning at her. She laughed and turned the notepad to a new sheet.

"Well, keep going if you're having fun," she said, giving him an encouraging pat. "Draw a turret or something."

"That's a brilliant idea! Yeah, I'll do that!"

Chell leaned back against the sofa as Wheatley happily started on a drawing of a turret, before slowly drifting off to sleep nestled comfortably between him and the sofa's arm.

* * *

><p><em>Never again.<em>

As GLaDOS ran the routine maintenance procedures on Aperture's nuclear reactors, she wondered if it might be better to do away with the android body that she'd been making a habit of using. It had been bad enough that she had, against her _much_ better judgment, caved to the moron's eager suggestion that she accompany him to Chell's apartment in town, but she also ended up briefly getting distracted with monitoring Blue and Orange's test run while lying on Chell's bed (after she compulsively pressed the button on the alarm clock that she found). She'd been curious as to what it would be like to lie in a bed and, _also_ against her better judgment, decided that Chell probably wouldn't mind if she gave it a try. It certainly explained why humans liked to lie in bed all the time. It was damn comfortable.

What in the world was she becoming?

It might be worth the corruption to delete the embarrassingly human characteristics that were surfacing in her adaptive programming, but she discovered that certain characteristics of herself could not be deleted so easily. It seemed to be a failsafe implemented in the programming that defined her: she was not allowed to delete certain base characteristics of herself without an organic Stalemate Associate to approve it, and the chances of Chell—the only live organic person she knew—agreeing to press the Stalemate Resolution Button in order to revert GLaDOS back into a blessedly heartless testing machine were slim to none.

Right…

This lying-to-yourself thing about not wanting friends _still_ wasn't working out.

Thankfully, she had something else to turn her attention away from her inner problems today. When Blue and Orange finished their tests last night, she had emerged from Chell's bedroom to find her asleep on the sofa with the moron in sleep mode beside her. GLaDOS had gone back to the Enrichment Center alone in the middle of the night (as it was nice not to have the moron blabbering at her during the walk back), and was already back in her main core in the Central AI Chamber when he returned in the morning, looking comically embarrassed and confused.

She'd sent him on his way to clean up a Conversion Gel leak in one of the maintenance areas of the Enrichment Center and was struck by how _quiet_ he'd been when she gave him the task. He actually seemed deep in thought about something and had immediately wandered off to do as he was told, but GLaDOS was still occupied with the maintenance routines on the nuclear reactors and was loath to risk a nuclear meltdown simply because she wanted to horribly violate his privacy by poking around the memories in his head. Oh, but she had every intention of doing so once she was sure the nuclear reactors would not be blowing up in the near future and she expected to find something very juicy in there, make no mistake.

While she was waiting for the reactor maintenance to complete, she watched Wheatley slowly plod by one of the cameras she'd had him install back in the maintenance areas. He still looked confused and was walking as though his body was having some trouble moving, which was rather curious as they had done nothing the previous night that should have affected his body in such a way. Running a quick diagnostic on his body returned no abnormalities other than his damaged neck. All his core components were running properly, though it seemed his mental processes were quite jumbled up at the moment and appeared to be affecting his body coordination.

GLaDOS watched with increasing irritation as he continued bungling the simple, simple tasks she'd laid out for him: (1) pause gel flow; (2) patch leak; (3) resume gel flow; and (4) clean up leaked gel. First, he accidentally _increased_ the flow of gel so that the leak actually got bigger, and when he had sorted that out, took the longest time to realize that the patch tool would not work if he didn't dry the area around the leak. He also kept _dropping_ the tool and managed to hit his head on the gel pipe hard enough that a potentially damaging impact registered on his sensors.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think that you were miserably failing at this job on purpose. But I know better," GLaDOS said through the link to his head when she could no longer take it. "Do you need me to make this into a test so that you'll have some…_motivation?_"

"_Sorry, sorry, I'm—ah—not quite sure what's wrong with me at the moment_," said Wheatley, rubbing his head as he pulled himself to his feet. "_I'll have to get back to you on that one._"

"Just finish what you're doing and get back here."

"_Right. Almost done here._"

He sounded downright _depressed_. Although GLaDOS's experimental Therapist Core had not gotten past preliminary testing phases (because the tests resulted in test subjects going insane from the advice the core was spouting), she didn't need it to see that something had happened between last night and this morning and it was affecting him mentally and emotionally. And as much as she would like to simply blow him up a few times to get his mind off things, his entry in that irritating friends database of hers was causing that conscience thing in her to kick in and suggest that she try talking to him before blowing him up.

About half an hour later, he wandered into the Central AI Chamber so completely covered in dried Conversion Gel that GLaDOS might have been able to successfully put a portal on him. She was a bit surprised, actually, that he wasn't overheating yet, considering that most of his vents were clogged by the gel. "What's wrong with you?" she asked when he sat down and looked up at her without a word. "I've run diagnostics on your body and there was nothing wrong until you clogged all your vents with Conversion Gel."

"I think something is broken," he said, and if he'd had tears, his eyes might have been welling up with them. "I can't think straight. Maybe something got damaged yesterday?"

"There is nothing physically wrong with your components," said GLaDOS, who was beginning to actually _worry_ that he wasn't rambling on like an idiot.

"I really think I broke something," Wheatley continued, clutching his head. "I've been confused ever since I got out of sleep mode…I thought it was because you left me behind but I don't think it's that."

"Ever since you got out of sleep mode," said GLaDOS flatly. She had a sneaking suspicion that she knew where this was going. "Does it have anything to do with Chell?"

"What? No, she didn't break me!" he said in alarm. "She just showed me how to use a pencil and draw pictures is all. Unless that's what broke me. Ohgodohgod, did I break myself?"

GLaDOS rolled her camera and let out a small sigh. "No, you idiot. Drawing pictures isn't going to break you unless you're jamming the pencil into places you shouldn't be."

If it was even possible, he looked even _more_ confused now. "But…something is definitely broken," he whined, putting a hand on his chest. "Something keeps looping in my head, and something in me is hurting."

"Your sensors aren't registering any pain," said GLaDOS. "In fact, you're perfectly fine. Whatever is hurting you is all in your head."

"My head isn't hurting. It's…something else," Wheatley said, his fingers twitching slightly. "Why do I keep thinking about her? It hurts and I can't make it stop."

While Caroline's voice mostly consisted of vague injections of emotion rather than actual _words_, what GLaDOS heard this time from Caroline's place in her hard disks confirmed what she had suspected earlier. It was almost sad, really, to see the poor moron so helpless and unable to process the emotions he was feeling. And if GLaDOS wasn't mistaken, the remnants of Caroline inside her seemed almost…happy.

"You idiot. It's called being in love."

* * *

><p><em>AN: WORD VOMIT STRIKES AGAIN. ALSO, THIS CHAPTER IS SHORT AND I FEEL LIKE IT KINDA SUCKS._

_I'm a little embarrassed to say that I cracked myself up imagining GLaDOS making the solution euphoria sound on Chell's bed. Talk about suggestive noises. D: Also, I initially had the idea of Chell and Wheatley climbing into bed with GLaDOS just to piss her off, but I figured that'd be suicide for them after she freaked out about the potatoes. Maybe I'll write some crackfic when this is done where Chell and Wheatley do just that. : D Speaking of climbing into bed with GLaDOS, I was talking with my friend this weekend. He happens to like outlining dirty, smutty fanfic ideas with me because it's effing hilarious, but I was actually a little disturbed by what he cooked up this time. The general idea was it involved a Chell, GLaDOS, and Wheatley threesome, and also tentacles. D:_

_Also, I think Portal broke my brain. I've been so meh about the writing in video games lately that when I played Portal 2, something in my brain broke. I actually had a bit of trouble finishing this because I was depressed or something for a while. I think it's because I'm actually going to grad school for computer science in game development, and I really hope to be able to make a game on the level of Portal—it really changed how I think about games. So guys, I hope that if I ever get to design games or write for them, that you'll all give it a shot. : D I might start an iPhone game soon. Please be my testers if it gets going. Haha._

_Also #2: I've had that "Coming Home" song stuck in my head for like 5 days now. Seriously, it sucks. And sometimes I can get it out by replacing it with another song, but then I just end up with "Want You Gone" stuck in my head instead. This is worse than when I had Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For" stuck in my head during a 16-hour plane ride back from the Philippines. The kicker in that story? Soon as I got out of the airport, the song played on the radio._

_Also #3: If anyone's going to AM2 this weekend, you might find me playing "Still Alive" and "Saria's Song" from Zelda on my ocarina somewhere if I'm not working._


	7. Definitions

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Seven: Definitions<strong>

"You idiot. It's called being in love."

Wheatley looked up at GLaDOS's towering form in confusion. Wasn't this love thing something that humans did? He'd seen scientists and engineers that were apparently in love before, and thought that it looked absolutely silly the way they kept making googly eyes at each other and sharing food and holding hands—

He peered down at his hands.

"What?" was all he could say in reply to GLaDOS's words.

This was madness—there was no way he could be in love. He wasn't a human, for one thing, and wasn't love supposed to be happy? All he felt right now was like all his components were made of lead and about to break into a million little pieces, and for some reason he felt something hurting. Something _must_ be broken. Maybe the motors controlling his limbs needed recalibrating, or maybe going into sleep mode without docking himself in his storage room at the facility was just as bad as GLaDOS told him it would be (although he wasn't as dead as she said he'd be, but it really felt like he would be soon).

"Do I need to define love for you?" said GLaDOS.

His mind really wasn't working right, because he couldn't bring himself to say a word. In fact, he couldn't even bring himself to move.

Dear god, this love thing was terrifying. He didn't want to die, he really didn't, because then how would he get to spend time with Chell?

"_LOVE. NOUN. DEFINITION ONE: A FEELING OF WARM PERSONAL ATTACHMENT OR DEEP AFFECTION, AS FOR A PARENT, CHILD, OR FRIEND,_" said the pleasant voice of the announcement system.

Warm personal attachment for a friend? He supposed that sounded about right for Chell. But wasn't GLaDOS his friend, too? She wasn't so bad now that she wasn't trying to kill everyone all the time…

"GLaDOS, am I in love with you?"

Wheatley toppled backward in fear when GLaDOS swung her body around and extended her head mere inches from his face.

"_No, idiot!_ At least, I hope you're not, unless you want to learn how to love the incinerator. Because it will love you with the burning passion of over 4000 kelvin."

"No, no, I don't think I'm in love with you!" Wheatley said, scrambling backwards as fear took hold of him. "At least I don't think I am! Unless you're doing this love thing too, and it doesn't really look like you are, so please I don't think I need to be incinerated." GLaDOS let out a sigh and pulled her head away.

"_LOVE. NOUN. DEFINITION TWO: A PROFOUNDLY TENDER, PASSIONATE AFFECTION FOR ANOTHER PERSON._"

Tender, passionate affection?

It seemed that GLaDOS was trying to make this as easy as possible for him, and he _still_ didn't understand what was going on. First of all, he wasn't exactly sure what to make of the word "affection." Sure, he could see the definition there in his dictionary files, but he wasn't exactly the best at categorizing the things he felt. After the entire mess with GLaDOS's body corrupting him and how its massive processing power allowed him to dwell on how absolutely furious it made him that GLaDOS called him a moron and said that Chell had done all the work in their escape, he didn't like to think too hard about his feelings. Just rolled with things most of the time, so to speak. It really was a wonder that GLaDOS had learned to overcome her body's madness, because if he were still stuck on it, the facility would have a very severe case of being blown to bits.

Maybe he should spend some time as a potato. Seemed to work well for her.

"Just had a brainwave," he said brightly, getting to his feet. "You can put me in a potato, and then I can sort out all of this, and everything will be just fine."

GLaDOS was silent. Perhaps his idea was so brilliant that she was speechless?

"Oh, you're serious," she said after a long, long silence. "Sorry, I was waiting for the part where you realized it was a stupid idea. I should make a note to stop holding you to such high expectations. There. I put it right next to the big letters that say 'MORON.'"

"But—"

"No. I don't want to hear it. Besides, you don't need to be a potato to sort it out," said GLaDOS, turning her head toward the lift in the back of the chamber, "because it turns out that she came to visit. You can sort it out with her yourself right now. Commencing awkward encounter in 3…2…1…"

On the last count, the door to the lift slid open and Chell walked out of the lift with a (lovely) smile on her face. Wheatley felt his entire body seize up when she caught sight of him and held a notepad and pencil aloft. "I brought you paper and a pencil!" she said. "I told you to take it with you but you forgot."

That dull pain in him that GLaDOS had said was all in his head flared up, and before he knew what he was doing, he found himself running from the Central AI Chamber. He wasn't sure where he was going or why he wanted to run, but he felt a vague fear of _something_ that he desperately wanted to get away from. It wasn't until he found himself near the ruined test chambers that he stopped running and sank down to the floor beside the remains of a collapsed Vital Apparatus Vent, his entire body trembling. Was this what love was? Frightening and makes his body shake (but that might have been the overheating from the clogged vents)? He thought he understood humans pretty well, actually, but the more time that he spent around a real live human that wasn't as brain-damaged as initially expected, the more he realized that he _probably_ didn't have as good a handle on things as he thought. Probably not.

Obviously not.

Right, then. Maybe he should try looking at things in a different way that hopefully wouldn't make him into a trembling mess.

If he ignored that odd pain and cleared away the thoughts were piling up like Weighted Storage Cubes coming out of a broken Apparatus Vent, then—

Nope, the thoughts started piling up again. Thoughts about Chell. And hands.

How about another approach? He liked numbers—most computer-based entities liked numbers.

So he counted. He counted from 0 to 100. Counted backwards. Counted in base-6. Counted in base-4. Counted in binary, except that was all 0s and 1s so that got a bit dull. Counted in hexadecimal, because apparently hexadecimal was supposed to be very therapeutic for computers, except all the letter As and Bs and Fs confused him so that really was a bit of a bust.

Mind's looking pretty clear now. Great job, numbers.

He liked spending time with Chell—definitely liked that. She was great company when he woke her up to escape from the facility because she actually listened to what he had to say, and he rather thought that she was even better company now because she could talk back to him. And he definitely didn't want to kill her anymore. In fact, he'd be quite upset if someone tried to kill her and just thinking about that made that dull pain in him grow even more. Was that love? Not wanting to kill her?

Maybe he should focus on the term "affection." His dictionary files had this to say about affection:

_Affection_

_Noun._

_1. Fond attachment, devotion, or love._

For god's sake, dictionary. Talk about a recursive definition. Love is affection and affection is love?

_2. Emotion; feeling; sentiment._

Right. Made sense…

_3. (Pathology) a disease, or the condition of being diseased; abnormal state of body or mind. _

Oh god, was he diseased? Abnormal somehow? Apparently he was abnormal. That couldn't be good. But GLaDOS told him he was perfectly fine. She was probably lying again, like she lied about sleep mode. What else could she be lying about? What if she lied about him being in love? What if he was _really_ in love with GLaDOS and she didn't want him to know because who would like a moron like—

Numbers, Wheatley.

0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1.

Mind clear. Brilliant strategy.

Clearly, going through the dictionary wasn't helping anything. So about that dull pain: it was almost like The Itch, except it wasn't conveniently labeled in his mind with any instructions on how to relieve it. The Itch was easy and told him to test test test test, which he had somehow twisted into kill kill kill kill (and also make turret-cubes), but it seemed that this feeling wasn't quite so simple. It was more complicated. By a lot. And it hurt more every time he thought of Chell, and it made him want to go find her and just sit or draw pictures or share cake or make her laugh…

He thought back to the humans he'd once known to be in love, and realized that all the things he wanted to do with her was what he'd seen those humans do.

So was that it? He was in love with Chell (and not GLaDOS)?

A laugh escaped his voice modulator. And he kept laughing—not that he was sure why exactly—until the laughs slowly morphed into strangled sobs. She wouldn't want him. Even though she kept saying that she didn't think he was a moron, all his blunders made it clear as day and even though he tried to read books and enrich himself after That One Time He Went Mad And Tried To Kill Them Both, that turned out very badly because he only really got through a few books before getting put off by that Machiavelli fellow. Better to be feared than loved? More like inviting people to fling bombs at you with portals.

Besides, he thought as he slowly got to his feet and began heading back to the Central AI Chamber, he wasn't very smart—he was the Intelligence _Dampening_ Sphere, after all. Chell was smart and took GLaDOS down once, and took _him_ down with GLaDOS's help. And they completed cooperative test chambers in half the time that it took Chell and himself to finish…They made quite a good team, he had to admit.

What if Chell was better off with GLaDOS? There was no way in android hell that he could compete with someone like her. She'd literally destroy him and would be happy to do it. Made sense, though…He wasn't anything more than an assistant in GLaDOS's eyes (camera?). Why would Chell want the gimpy assistant when she could have the all-powerful master of the facility?

"You're lost."

Wheatley jumped at the sound of the voice and found himself staring right into the optical sensor of a turret. "Sorry, what?" he said, bewildered.

"You're lost," it repeated, its tracking laser scanning his face.

"Er…sorry, no, not that I know of."

"Me too."

Oh, it was the lost turret that GLaDOS had retrieved from one of the disused storage chambers. "You're lost?" he asked. "But GLaDOS put you here, didn't she?"

"I'm different."

"Ah. So you're _not_ the turret that GLaDOS put here? Then who put you here? I don't think it was me."

"Her name is Caroline."

"Still dunno know what you're talking about, mate. There aren't any Carolines here. Sorry," said Wheatley, giving the poor, confused turret an apologetic look before turning to continue on his way.

"The answer is beneath us. You're lost."

Wheatley immediately stopped and turned back to look at the turret. Not that it was doing anything—it was actually doing a lot of nothing, which is what turrets were supposed to do unless they found something organic to shoot at. They weren't supposed to tell him that he was lost (when he wasn't) or tell him about Carolines (when there weren't any around). Unless it meant the nice Caroline lady from the old facility's recordings, but what would a turret know about that?

"Wheatley, there you are."

He wheeled around and found, to his horror, Chell and GLaDOS approaching him from the opposite end of the hallway, portal guns in hand and their feet strapped into Long Fall Boots. "Why did you run off like that?" Chell asked with a hurt frown that made that dull pain in him throb a little harder.

"Oh, sorry! Remembered I—er—left a turret in a pump control booth!" he said, laughing nervously. "Bit of a bad place for a turret to be, I thought. So I went to rescue it when you arrived. You know, so it wouldn't—er—be lonely." He patted the weird turret that accused him of being lost in the hopes that Chell would buy his admittedly pathetic excuse and that GLaDOS would have mercy and not contradict him.

"Um…a turret in a control booth? Aren't there Emancipation Grids there?" said Chell, raising an eyebrow. It was obvious that she didn't believe a word that he said (really, who would) and opened her mouth to probably ask him what in the world he was talking about, but GLaDOS rolled her eyes and began pulling Chell away by the wrist.

"The moron doesn't know what he's saying," said GLaDOS as she led Chell past him. "He clogged his vents, so he's overheating."

"Overheating? Shouldn't you do something about that?" asked Chell, looking back over her shoulder at him.

"I don't _have_ to do anything. He knows where the Reassembly Machine is. I _can_ encourage him to go there if I blow him up, though…"

And as GLaDOS pulled Chell out the door and out of sight, Wheatley heard her voice in his head.

"_You owe me, idiot._"

He let out a sigh and sank down beside the turret, trying (and failing) to suppress the tremors that were going through his body. He really would overheat if this kept up. "Nice of her, though, don't you think?" he said to the turret with a small laugh. "She's been a lot nicer lately—still catches me by surprise, honestly. She even saved you, didn't she? Didn't toss you onto the Redemption Line for being lost or anything."

Wasn't this just brilliant? He was talking to a turret now.

"Her name is Caroline."

"Look, could you stop saying that, mate? I don't know who Caroline is."

Wheatley sighed again. What answer could possibly be beneath them? All that was there was the old facility filled with moon rocks and toxic waste and mantis men remains that they couldn't find. But that recording said that there was a test involving fighting mantis men…unless Blue and Orange already found them in the Enrichment Spheres that GLaDOS told him never to visit.

"The answer is beneath us."

"Is that all you can say? That and things about being lost?"

"That's all I can say."

"Riiiiight then."

"The answer is beneath us."

He peered at the turret in exasperation. It sure was set on whatever was beneath them…

Before he knew it, he was running off in the opposite direction of the cooperative testing chambers and toward the lift that would take him down into the old Aperture facility. He wasn't sure what made him decide to defy GLaDOS's very very clear orders to never go where he was intending—what did he expect to find down there, anyway? A detailed explanation on what this love thing was supposed to be? Still, that turret had been _pretty_ persistent in telling him about that Caroline person and whatever answer was beneath them, and it would be a good way to distract himself from the thoughts that were piling up in his mind again (because counting was getting pretty tiresome and only making things worse at this point).

As he stood nervously in the rickety lift descending toward the Enrichment Spheres of Test Shaft 09, Wheatley wondered if, in fact, this was a good idea. Actually, he was pretty sure it was a bad one—he'd been designed to have bad ideas, after all—but if this was _maybe_ worse than was normal for him. Worse than the idea of suggesting that Chell accompany him down into Test Shaft 03. He, Blue, and Orange installed cameras down there, so GLaDOS would know if he was slinking around trying to find whatever it was she was trying to hide from him. He hoped that she wouldn't be monitoring the cameras too closely since her attention would be split between her android body and the main body in the Central AI Chamber. Otherwise, he expected to be blown up pretty soon…

The highest accessible Enrichment Sphere didn't look like anything special when he stepped out of the lift. Looked like all the other Enrichment Spheres, actually—it was a bit anticlimactic, he thought. Why go through all the bother of keeping him out if there wasn't anything there? Had the mantis men been there earlier?

"_All right, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons? Don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's going to burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm going to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!_"

Wheatley stopped in his tracks at the sudden flood of Cave Johnson's furious words and grimaced at the sickly coughs that followed. GLaDOS told him that this man had died of moon rock poisoning—he sounded like those moon rocks were really getting to him.

"_The point is: if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So I have the engineers figuring that out now."_

If Wheatley had any blood, it would have run cold. Storing a man's intelligence and personality in a computer—they'd really done it, hadn't they? He'd been human once, or so GLaDOS had said. And apparently he'd been a moron then too…

"_Brain mapping. Artificial intelligence. We should have been working on it thirty years ago. I will say this—and I'm gonna say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day—if I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now, she'll argue. She'll say she can't. She's modest like that. But you make her. Hell, put her in my computer—I don't care. All right, test's over. You can head back to your desk._"

He stood there in silence as the recording finished.

Chell.

"_You haven't been to the top of Test Shaft 09, have you?"_

The turret.

"_Her name is Caroline."_

And Cave Johnson.

"_I want Caroline to run this place._"

* * *

><p>"Come on, tell me what's wrong with Wheatley," Chell called down from where the Excursion Funnel was suspending her in the air.<p>

"There is nothing wrong with the moron, other than the fact that he's a moron," said GLaDOS, shooting a portal behind Chell so the Funnel could push her through. "And he's only overheating because his vents are clogged, which he clogged because he's a moron. So it's really just an average day for him."

"You expect me to believe that?" Chell said, rolling her eyes before picking up a Weighted Pivot Cube and jumping down beside GLaDOS. "Normally he trips over himself to come see me when I visit. Did I do something to scare him?"

GLaDOS was silent as she placed the portals to redirect a Thermal Discouragement Beam being emitted from a wall. She _could_ just tell Chell about Wheatley's little dilemma and it would be delicious to see his face when he found out what she did—but then she'd feel guilty all day, courtesy of that nagging conscience of hers. Really, she was starting to prefer the sanctimonious voice of the Morality Core over her own because _that_ voice had been easier to ignore.

"No, he just came out of sleep mode badly," she said finally. "It can happen if his power supply isn't charged enough. I should probably fix that. But I won't."

"I guess that makes sense," said Chell as she redirected the Thermal Discouragement Beam into a switch. Immediately the light indicators for the door mechanism turned orange, and with a brief glance at GLaDOS, Chell leapt into the Excursion Funnel with GLaDOS following shortly behind. When Chell pushed herself out and went to stand in front of the camera at the exit, she looked to GLaDOS curiously. "So did you fix that—er—_euphoria_ problem yet?"

A ripple of irritation passed through GLaDOS's circuits. It incensed her that she couldn't perform a shallow mirror of her main core without getting the double dose of solution euphoria, and while it would probably be easier to simply do a partial core transfer, it was now a point of pride to get it working right. Never in all her years lying to, incinerating, and neurotoxining test subjects had she ever had such a problem overcoming what should have been a simple programming exercise—maybe discovering Caroline had dulled her skills. A tiny voice in the back of her head—her own voice, probably—kept asking her why double the euphoria was a bad thing, because double of a good thing was a _very_ good thing. Part of the reason she was loath to accept the double euphoria was the fact that it felt so good that she always lost control of her body, and she _always—_without fail_—_broadcasted that disgusting moan throughout the entire facility.

"I modified the mirror parameters again," said GLaDOS, standing out of the camera's range. "The Enrichment Center would like to encourage you to smash your head against the wall if I make that noise again."

Well, the moment of truth.

The camera made a tiny noise as she stepped into its range. Nothing but a nice tingle spread through her sensors.

"Hey, it looks like it worked this time, GLaD—"

"N N N N G G G G H H H H H H A A A A A A A A A H H H N N N N N N H H H H H H H!"

For god's sake, why couldn't she make this simple, simple thing stop being so absolutely, mind-numbingly, body-disablingly _HOLY TURRET-CUBES-ON-A-STICK AMAZING? _The cognitive dissonance in her mind was unbearable—part of her wanted this feeling to _never ever stop please I don't care if I moan like a dirty human_ and the other part wanted to fling herself into the incinerator out of absolute shame. And as she writhed around on the floor, all the maintenance feeds and camera feeds she was passively monitoring back from her main body flashed wildly through her mind like some cybernetic acid trip.

"GLaDOS?"

When her optical system came back online, she found Chell crouched beside her, her face a mixture of amusement and concern with a distinct lack of her head smashed against the wall. "Leave it to you to ignore Enrichment Center protocol," GLaDOS said, her voice crackling as she sat up.

"It's what I do. But you should know that."

"Did it broadcast?"

"Er…yeah. Are you all right?"

As she got to her feet, she swayed so badly that Chell felt the need to grab her arm to hold her up (not that GLaDOS needed it). "I need to recalibrate the balance system," GLaDOS said once she found her balance. "Something happened that threw my gyros off calibration."

That brief and nearly mind-destroying flash of all the monitoring feeds of the facility had never happened so badly that it threw off her balancing mechanisms. It was slightly frustrating that everything she did seemed to either do nothing or only slightly decrease the euphoria effect, where logically she should be getting more tolerant of the effect and require more to satisfy The Itch. If only the idiot had thought of doing this before he decided to surprise them by trying to kill them, but GLaDOS supposed that required him to be less of an idiot. Clearly not in the design specifications for him—and she knew, because she did check his design specifications.

She examined the reference recording of the feed flash as her body recalibrated and found that every feed—every camera, every sensor—had flashed through her mind. She was actually a little surprised that it didn't fry the android's hardware. Even the cameras back down in the old facility had gone through her mind, and she could hear the recordings plain as day (or at least, a plain-as-day 5-nanosecond snippet of a recording).

_Wait a minute._

Nobody should be down there.

She immediately opened a link to her main body to access all the camera feeds of the old Aperture facility and found the moron standing by the exit of Enrichment Sphere 6 in Test Shaft 09 just as Cave Johnson's recording finished. Her fist quivered in rage at his audacity: after all her very clear warnings to _never go there_, he runs off down there first thing after she was so generous as to do him a _favor?_

"You utter, complete moron," GLaDOS snarled into his head. "I thought I told you never to go there. Multiple times."

"_G-G-GLaDOS! I-I-I'm sorry, didn't mean it! Well, actually, I did mean it, but it was a bad idea, and I really really want to emphasize that I'm very sorr—"_

Just blowing him up once was too good for him.

* * *

><p><em>AN: WHEATLEY, WHY YOU SO CONFUSED._

_ALSO, EFFING FORMATTING. I CAN'T WRITE GLaDOS'S MOAN OR BINARY PROPERLY BECAUSE OF THE STUPID FORMATTING. EFF. EFFING EFF.  
><em>

_This was actually going to be a few pages longer, but since I won't be able to write this weekend because I'm working the convention, I thought I'd just cut it off here._

_Also, I wanted to say that I really appreciate all the reviews. The good and the bad. And the meh review got me thinking…This chapter's a bit meh too. Also, the last chapter was a little meh, wasn't it? It was like one of those beach episodes in anime where they don't really do much but it's fun to see them out on the beach. So, I did this quickie for you guys._

**BONUS STORY: Wheatley Goes To the Beach **

"Wow, sand! So much sand! It's everywhere, and also in between my toes!"

Wheatley ran through the sand, laughing wildly with his limbs flailing. "Where are we, again?" he called over his shoulder at his two companions. "This isn't Michigan, right?"

"No. For the last time, this is [REDACTED]," GLaDOS said in exasperation, rolling her eyes when he ran along the waterline, tripped over a rock, and fell face-first into an oncoming wave. Which he didn't like at all, because it hurt and it sort of felt like drowning, which is what he heard happened to humans when water got into their lungs. Actually, it felt a lot like drowning and he was becoming genuinely frightened for his life until he felt someone grab him by the back of his shorts and drag him out of the water.

"You don't want to breathe water in, do you?" said Chell when she released his shorts. "It's salty and you'll drown. Now put your butt away."

With a laugh, he pulled his shorts up back to their rightful place at his waistline. "Right _koff koff_ good idea _koff_ to not _koff_ drown," he laughed, shaking sand out of his shorts. Chell squatted down beside him and began piling sand into a mound.

"Don't tell GLaDOS," she whispered, "but I brought the potato salad that you liked."

"Brilliant! Thank you thank you! I absolutely love potato salad!"

But GLaDOS had the hearing of an animal—at the smallest hint of the word "potato," her head snapped toward them before she tore open the food basket to find the offending salad. Wheatley felt a pang of fear and disappointment when he saw GLaDOS open the salad container and heft it in her hands to throw it.

She didn't throw it.

She put it down, actually.

Because a horde of seagulls was heading straight for them.

"Bird…bird…_birds…BIRDS…!" _Wheatley cried, scrambling away as the seagulls began descending upon them. They were so terrifying and there were _so many_—the sky was getting obscured by white and feathers and seagull honking—there was no escape—birds everywhere—he'd die for sure—!

Chell blinked and glanced at GLaDOS's headpiece. "Don't you think that's a bit much? You know he's afraid of birds," she said before turning back to look at Wheatley's core, which was trembling wildly in its receptacle as he cried out for help.

"The beach simulator's bird algorithm needed to be stress tested," GLaDOS said, swiveling her body around to peer at the monitors around her. Birds were fluttering everywhere while Wheatley cowered in the sand.

"So…er…how's it doing?"

"The bird algorithm is doing _pretty good._"


	8. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Eight: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back<strong>

"_Don't hurt him! Stop! You'll kill him!"_

"_This is science. It's a classical conditioning experiment to see if brutally crushing him can condition him to listen to my orders."_

"_Come on, stop it! What's the big deal, anyway? So what if he knows about Caroline?"_

"_Because Caroline—"_

"_Are you embarrassed or something?"_

"_I think you were better as a _mute_ lunatic. You just had that problem where you tried to murder me twice. But if I try to make you mute again by tearing out your vocal cords, you'll probably murder me again."_

"_Probably."_

_Thunk._

Wheatley let out an agonized groan—absolutely everything was hurting, even things he didn't even know he had until they started hurting. That's all he knew after GLaDOS caught him in the Enrichment Sphere: lots of pain, and suffering, and probably a lot of exploding too. He was actually a bit surprised that he was alive and not in, say, Android Hell—unless, of course, this was Android Hell and he'd been in for much more terrible things. Like fires. Or brimstone. He'd heard once that brimstone was actually rather smelly so it would be a bit upsetting to be around it all the time, but then again, it had been the Fact Core that told him this so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

"Wheatley? Are you okay?"

It was bloody difficult to open his eyes since his face felt like it had been through a mashy spike plate and back about a million and one times—knowing GLaDOS, she would've made it a million and _two_ times, then taunt him about it (which she probably would as she was aware that he was awake). When he did finally manage to crack one open, he found Chell staring down at him with a hand on his face.

"Ch-Ch-Chell! F-f-fancy seeing you here!" he sputtered, unable to keep himself from laughing in spite of the sharp (and rather alarming) pain that was engulfing his body. Come on, Wheatley, stop laughing. Why couldn't he stop laughing?

"Is his voice broken?" she asked, peering down into his eye. Still couldn't get the other one open. It was like he only had one. Might as well have, if he was as beaten up as he felt.

"No, he's just an idiot. His voice modulator is perfectly fine. I made sure not to crush _that._ You know, in case he wanted to tell you something."

"Oh no, n-n-nothing to say here, other than 'H-hey, what a brilliant day to not be dead!' It's great, isn't it—not being dead and all. I love waking up in horrible pain to find myself not dead. Absolutely love it," Wheatley laughed anxiously, his voice crackling as his eye flitted to GLaDOS's looming form behind Chell's shoulder. Which, it seemed, was quite high up there. "Er…is it just me or are you bigger than normal? N-not that you're fat! Definitely not! Just…scaled larger. Proportionally. That's what I meant."

"Well…" said Chell.

Well, that wasn't encouraging.

What also wasn't encouraging was when he realized that Chell was holding him up. By the head. And he couldn't feel his hands.

"Oh no! Wh-wh-why can't I feel my arms and legs? Are they broken? Am I just a head?" he wailed. "And my other eye! Can't feel that either! Oh, this is bad—this is really bad…!"

"Well…you only have one eye right now," Chell said slowly and with an apologetic smile. "Um…and no arms. Or legs."

"I thought we could celebrate your latest act of idiocy by presenting you with your old sphere body back and dusting off the old management rail," GLaDOS said brightly. "It took me a while to bash all the dents out of it from when you crashed on Earth's surface, but I'm sure it wasn't as painful for you as it sounded. And it sounded _very_ painful."

He was a sphere again? Definitely didn't expect that. Bit of a twist, in fact. And not the exciting kind. If he had tears, he would've cried. GLaDOS was doing this just to torment him, either because he went through with that very bad idea to go to the forbidden Enrichment Sphere or because of that "being in love" business that he still didn't have a good grasp on—or both.

And now…now he had no _hands_.

No…No no no no no.

"Don't worry, being a sphere is okay too," said Chell, and he felt a horrible sinking feeling inside—like the dull throb from before but not quite so dull this time. "Just like old times right? Except without the killing. Please."

"As if I'm letting that moron anywhere near a core transfer receptacle," GLaDOS said lazily, turning her body away. "So, since all you can do is talk, let's talk about why you decided to go down to that Enrichment Sphere."

He quivered in Chell's hands. "The t-turret was talking about a Caroline, so I thought, 'I really would like to know who this Caroline is,' and next thing I know, I have a bit of a brainwave and run off for the lift. Wouldn't take more than ten minutes, twelve at most, really. Can't blame a sphere for being curious, c-can you? You're always telling me n-not to go there, after all…"

"Oh, I hope you found something _fascinating_ down there," said GLaDOS as a pincer descended from behind a panel and crept closer toward him. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

The utter calm of GLaDOS's voice was infinitely more frightening than if she was screaming full-power at him through the facility's speaker system. The screaming would be a close second, though. A very close second. It was even scarier than the chamber where all the robots scream at you, and he'd heard some of the construction robots talk about it in there, and it sounded absolutely ghastly. "J-just that Cave Johnson h-hated lemons, talked a bit about personality constructs—quite interesting, just thought you'd like to know—and…er…he wanted Caroline to run the facility and...youkindofdothatdon'tyou?"

Chell blinked and gave him a bewildered look. "What?" she said, arching an eyebrow.

He couldn't keep himself from trembling in Chell's hands. "W-w-well, you see—this Caroline person seemed f-familiar to me somehow, a-and you know…er…Oh, I'm just going to say it," he said as his nerve began to fail him. "GLaDOS…are you Caroline? Or…_were_, rather?"

Silence. Terrifying silence.

"No."

What Wheatley had actually expected was horrific pain courtesy of the pincer claws hovering above Chell, so he immediately cried out, "I'M SORRY AARRGH IT HURTS PLEASE SORR—w-wait. Huh?"

He thought he had everything worked out for once, that the recording he'd been forbidden from hearing was the final piece of a GLaDOS-shaped puzzle that he was putting together. He'd been so proud of himself and his non-moronity and how he managed to find GLaDOS deep dark secret that she had once been a human just like him and Chell.

Well, so much for that.

Wheatley: 0  
>GLaDOS: a lot more than 0<p>

"I'm not Caroline, moron, and I never have been," GLaDOS said coldly. "What would you do if I was? That everything would suddenly be different and there would be cake? Maybe apologize for all the time I spent absolutely loathing you? Because that sounds just _peachy_, doesn't it?"

"Y-yeah, actually!" Wheatley said brightly. That was exactly what he'd been hoping for. Brilliant. "Quite peachy, in fact. Could we do that?"

Wheatley cried out when the world suddenly jerked and he found himself held tightly to Chell's body as she flung herself backwards to avoid GLaDOS's claws. "I couldn't tell if you were serious," GLaDOS said, wrenching her claw out of the floor where it had gotten stuck, "so I thought I'd try to crush you just in case. Looks like I missed…Let me try again. Here we go."

"Wait, wait!" Wheatley cried, shutting the flaps over his eye as Chell quickly rolled and narrowly avoided another attack. "You said I was human once! I thought we would be the same!"

Chell had to throw herself backwards again when a claw came crashing down where she'd been lying. "You. _MORON_. We aren't the same! As if I could ever be the same as _you!_" GLaDOS spat, slamming her claw into the floor and rearing her chassis up in frustration as Chell scrambled as far away from the claws as was possible. When they were safely out of range, Chell unwrapped her arms from around his body and cautiously set him down on the floor.

"What do you mean?" said Chell before Wheatley could summon up the courage to ask this himself.

GLaDOS swiveled her body around to face them, extending her head as close to them as possible and tilting it to the side, as though to thrust a chin at them. "The idiot's hardware was designed _after_ they scanned his brain and stripped out all his memories so they could modify his personality to suggest terrible ideas to me," GLaDOS said. "And the engineers didn't switch his full build on until _after_ they transferred him into the core. It looks like they learned their lesson after the _failure_ that I was. But that didn't stop me from killing them with neurotoxin."

"They…took my memories?" Wheatley said, his eye quivering slightly. GLaDOS pulled back a little, her head bobbing in a sort of shrug.

"Didn't even back them up. That's how much they cared about you," she said. "They were _glad_ that you were finally useful as a core. The humans really were _disgusting_. You should be glad I killed them all."

But Wheatley felt that something was still amiss. If they had taken all his memories away, then… "Then why does Caroline's name seem so familiar? Just a little bit. A teeny bit."

GLaDOS was silent, but he saw her yellow eye move nearly imperceptibly toward Chell before she turned her entire head away without saying a word. "Oh, come on. Just tell him already," said Chell in exasperation, and it made Wheatley wonder if GLaDOS had some sort of link to Chell's head that they were using to communicate. When GLaDOS ignored her (and in fact started running routine maintenance on the neurotoxin generator), Chell rolled her eyes. "You know he's just going to be thinking about it until he can't take it anymore and does something like this again."

Did he ever mention how smart Chell was?

"Oh, I think I can find some way to get around my friends database and horribly maim him so that this can never happen again. He won't even be able to speak," GLaDOS said almost offhandedly as the performance statistics of the neurotoxin generator began scrolling across the monitors (the generator appeared to be quite healthy). Panic started bubbling up from deep within Wheatley's processes.

"No! Please no! I—I promise I'll do anything you say! Just—just don't take my voice away. _Please._" If he'd had a body, he would have prostrated himself in front of her like she was some sort of queen or empress or goddess or _something_. Because without a voice—without a voice, how would he ever tell her—?

She ignored him for a few silent moments as the announcement system cheerfully reported that the neurotoxin generator was operating at its normal, dangerously lethal levels, before slowly (and terrifyingly) turning her head to fix her camera on him. "Give me your word that you will never ask about this again after today," she said slowly. "Or I will blow you up. And take away your voice."

"Yes! Yes yes yes, I promise! I promise I'll never talk about it again!"

"I've recorded your answer for posterity," said GLaDOS, turning her body toward them, "so don't even try to pretend that you never agreed. Now come closer so you can see the monitors. I won't crush you."

Relief flooded his circuits as Chell picked him up and cautiously moved closer to GLaDOS—while being a sphere again was definitely a step in the _wrong_ direction, he was grateful that GLaDOS had decided to take pity or have mercy or whatever it was she was doing. When Chell took her place beside her, the neurotoxin generator statistics disappeared from the monitors and was replaced by a video paused on a frame of a dark-haired man with glasses, his messy hair slicked back in a sort of half-hearted attempt to make it behave. Wheatley thought that he had a rather overwhelmed look about him, judging by the faint dark lines under his eyes and how crooked his tie looked.

"Who's…who is that?" Wheatley asked weakly, though he was sure he knew the answer already.

"Caroline's assistant." When Wheatley turned his eye up to look at GLaDOS, she sighed and added, "Caroline took over Aperture Science after Cave Johnson died. So in other words, she was running the entire company and needed a little help."

"And this assistant is…er…" said Wheatley quietly.

"One of the biggest morons ever employed by Aperture Science. And she made him her assistant, just to slow down development on _me_," said GLaDOS, a hint of disdain in her voice. "And they used him to make _you_."

"Ah. A moron. I see," Wheatley said gloomily. A moron…even as a human. "And my—er—his name?"

GLaDOS let out a laugh. "You'll _love_ your name. He was so embarrassed by it that he insisted everyone call him 'Wheatley.' Even Caroline."

When she fell silent, Chell snorted in annoyance. "Well? What was his name?"

"His name was Millard Wheatley," GLaDOS said, her voice dripping with amusement. "It sounds like a disease, doesn't it? And look how you turned out."

And, as she turned her head back to look at the monitors, the video began playing.

* * *

><p>"<em>I'm back from the pharmacy!" Wheatley said brightly as he entered Caroline's sprawling office. She glanced up at him from her desk, rubbing her temples in a fruitless attempt to relieve the splitting headache assaulting her brain.<em>

"_Keep your voice down, Wheatley," she said wearily, closing her eyes. "Please give me some ibuprofen."_

"_Right, right, sorry," Wheatley whispered, setting a white paper bag down on her desk and pulling a small container of ibuprofen out of his pocket. She'd been having a headache problem—among other things—for quite some time now, so he'd been thoughtful enough to start carrying the little container around in his pocket. That was, unfortunately, as far as his capacity for thoughtfulness went; he still tended to say too much too fast when it was obvious her head was about to implode upon itself._

_Aperture Science was bleeding money left and right, and it was all she could do to keep the company afloat so that science could get done. She'd already sold her soul to science and she wasn't even sure what to make of her utterly distorted sense of morality anymore, but even so—she couldn't just leave Aperture and had long since resigned to the fact that she would die within its walls, but that didn't stop her from trying to postpone the date at which she expected everything to fall to pieces. She had to admit, though, that the stress was getting to be too much for a woman her age; didn't the normal elderly retire to their homes, watch lots of daytime television, and maybe go out and play bingo once in a while?_

"_Wheatley, what day was my meeting with the Navy again?" she asked once she downed the ibuprofen that he handed her._

"_Ah, that would be…er…one moment," he said, laughing nervously as he flipped through a battered organizer that had sticky notes and strips of paper sticking haphazardly out of the sides. "Almost there…almost there…ah! Next Thursday at ten AM. I believe they wanted to discuss shower curtains." Not two seconds after he spoke, papers and notes tumbled out of his organizer and fluttered to the floor._

"_Shower curtains. Right," she murmured, rubbing the sides of her head again as he gave a yelp of surprise and scrambled to pick up all the escaped papers. Wouldn't Mr. Johnson be so _excited_ about the talks with the Navy if he were here and not dead from lunar sediment poisoning? The Navy would finally be getting those shower curtains, and she wouldn't have to be the one to deal with the GLaDOS project. Then again, knowing Cave Johnson, it was entirely possible that he might take a liking to the idea of an entire facility's AI unit being his personal assistant… _

"_Sorry if I'm being too forward," Wheatley said as he tried to herd the notes back into their proper places in his organizer, "but I noticed that your doctor increased your antidepressant dosage again. Do you…er…want to talk? Or anything? I can listen! Really! I'd be happy to!"_

_Caroline mentally laughed. He might be an idiot, but he had his moments. "Thank you for asking, but I'll be fine," she said._

"_All right then," he said, giving her that sad puppy face he tended to make whenever he did something wrong. But he seemed to get over it in a few seconds and pulled an apple out of the paper bag. "In that case, I brought you another apple this morning! My mum was always saying that an apple a day would keep the doctor away. Didn't always work out, of course—had to see the doctor anyways, especially that one time I tripped and had to get stitches in my forehead—but it's a nice thought, isn't it?"_

_She stared at the apple that Wheatley placed before her. He'd been doing this ever since she returned from a routine doctor's visit with instructions to eat more fruit. Every morning at the office and sometimes on weekends when she had him come to her home so they could get caught up on work, he'd give her an apple and usually spout some nonsense about having a fruit every day—which was solid advice, but it was irritating how he could remember the damn apples and not whatever thing she told him earlier in the day (again, entirely brought upon herself by her desperate attempts to slow down the GLaDOS project). If she was lucky, he'd forgo the fruit and give her a bottle of orange juice instead, but it was usually apples: red ones, green ones, Fuji ones, McIntosh ones, and even some British apple she couldn't remember the name of that he brought back after visiting his parents. _

_An apple a day._

_Almost every day._

_Something inside her snapped._

"_You know what, I don't want this apple," she said, pushing the apple back toward a perplexed Wheatley. "I don't _need_ this apple. I don't need any more apples! I am an old woman, and I run this company, and I can have an apple whenever I _damn_ well please! Which is not now!" Her voice was growing louder and louder with each sentence. "When life gives you apples? You can't even make lemonade out of apples! You know what, Wheatley? We should talk to the lab boys. Have them invent an apple that'll make LEMON JUICE. They've been asked to make stranger things on _his_ orders! It'd be better than all the other god-forsaken things they're building in this facility! I wish life would give me some lemonade instead of whatever the hell _THIS_ is that I've got to run!"_

_By the time she finished her apple tirade, she was breathing heavily and Wheatley looked thoroughly bewildered. She had no idea what came over her, and already she was feeling incredibly ashamed that she completely lost control of her emotions in front of her assistant. "I am _so_ sorry," she said, sinking back down into her chair as a faint flush began creeping onto her face. "I—I'm not mad at you, Wheatley. Thank you for bringing me fruit every day."_

"_Er…sh-shall I bring different fruits instead? Grapefruit maybe? Or a potato?" he said cheerily in spite of that bewildered and slightly frightened look on his face._

_She sighed and didn't even bother to correct him about the potato._

"_Yes, thank you."_

"_Great!" he said, a smile returning to his face. "Now, if I'm looking at this calendar correctly—and I'm not entirely sure that I am—you have a meeting with the GLaDOS leads in half an hour. It may or may not be tomorrow, in fact. Maybe we should pop down there and take a look just in case."_

"_Okay. Let's get going, then."_

* * *

><p>"This was one of Caroline's clearer and uncorrupted memories that I could render," said GLaDOS as the monitors switched to what appeared to be security footage of Wheatley running through a hallway with a cup of coffee in hand, tripping, spilling coffee everywhere, apologizing profusely to the janitor, running back to the cafeteria for a fresh cup, and running back to where Caroline had been before the engineers took her away. "And, as you can see, you were as incompetent as ever. It was driving Caroline insane. But I suppose it was a necessary evil, like when they stuck you on me. That was <em>very<em> evil."

"What…what happened when Caroline was…" Wheatley started, but he trailed off, unsure of how to really phrase the question.

"Oh, they distracted him for a bit," said GLaDOS, a hint of a laugh in her voice. "Gave him busy work to do and told him that Caroline had been so stressed out that she immediately left for the Bahamas. Only a moron would believe that story, and guess what? He believed it. At least until they took him to become the Intelligence Dampening Sphere. That's you, in case you got a little lost."

"So I used to be Caroline's assistant…" Wheatley said softly.

It sounded a lot like what he was doing now, actually—he was doing a lot of assisting for GLaDOS, wasn't he?

"Yes. And you used to give her headaches just like the one you're giving me now, so why don't I put you back on your management rail so you can _get out?_"

That actually sounded like a good idea. His processors were literally buzzing with a flood of thoughts (or he was overheating) so a little time on the old management rail might be good for him (and he feared that if he stayed near GLaDOS any longer, he'd blurt out a question that would get his voice taken away). He hardly noticed when a pincer pulled him out of Chell's arms as a rail extended itself into the Central AI Chamber, but he _did_ notice and in fact cried out in pain when GLaDOS roughly jammed him back onto the rail. Once the pain subsided, he wriggled a bit on the rail and felt a bit odd hanging there again, looking down at Chell. It was almost like those out-of-body experiences he'd heard humans sometimes had (and he _was_ out of his body).

"Anything you want to say before you go off to clean up the ruins of the Extended Relaxation Center? There are a few dead humans stinking up the place."

"Er—no, not particularly," he said nervously, peering down at Chell and slowly, slowly making his way out of the chamber. "Well, off I go, then. Right. To the Relaxation Center. With all the dead humans."

When Chell waved at him, he desperately wished that he had hands so that he could wave back at her.

"Oh, actually, I do have one more question," said Wheatley before passing the panel that had flipped up to allow the management rail through.

"It had better be a good one," said GLaDOS, her yellow camera flickering menacingly.

Wheatley trembled slightly and prepared himself to bolt out of the chamber at the first sign of impending death. If he didn't ask now, he might never have the nerve…

"Er…so I was doing a lot of thinking about what we—ah—discussed earlier, and I was wondering…ChellareyouinloveiwthGLaDOS?"

Silence.

Very awkward silence. Maybe asking that question was a bad idea.

"_What?_" both Chell and GLaDOS suddenly exclaimed.

"Am I in love with—_what?_" Chell sputtered, a horrified look on her face. "GLaDOS is kind of a weird friend, I guess, but—you mean like _love_ love? I'm not in _love_ with her! Where did you get that idea?"

"I—I don't know—I just thought—"

"Get _out _before I kill you!" GLaDOS snarled, her body quivering in rage.

Wheatley didn't need telling twice, but as he sped as far away from the Central AI Chamber as he could (while screaming "Sorry sorry sorry sorry!" as loud as his voice modulator would allow), he felt that dull pain lighten up _just_ a bit.

* * *

><p>Chell took a seat in a corner of the little coffee shop that she often frequented after a particularly mind-numbing day at work, setting down a cup of coffee and a muffin. She was glad it was almost Friday—Fridays meant that she'd soon have an excuse to visit her computer friends back at the Enrichment Center. There was a brief phase she passed through where she tried to make some human friends to offset all the time she was spending with her computerized ones, but she found that she had some trouble relating to them and also found that she was bored to tears going shopping with her coworkers. Not that there was much to shop for, courtesy of the world-ravaging that the Combine had gifted Earth with, but they were in a relatively untouched area of Michigan so life continued (mostly) unhindered, though the town did seem to be on the verge of crumbling onto itself. She tried to imagine shopping like a puzzle where she had to figure out how not to die of boredom, but she often caught herself looking at white surfaces and thinking that said surfaces would be great to put portals on.<p>

She sighed and took a bite of her muffin, absently watching people enter and leave the coffee shop. It was interesting to watch the different kinds of people that came to buy coffee—some people looked nervous (perhaps worrying about that impending Combine attack the mayor had been going on and on about but hasn't come yet), others furious (and yelling at the poor cashier behind the register). Today, though, a pair of rather irritated men caught her attention. She liked to think that she came to the coffee shop enough to know who the regulars were, and these two looked a bit out of place with their generally bedraggled appearances in stark contrast to the shiny, immaculate briefcases at their sides.

Her interest was further piqued when they sat down at the table beside her, apparently arguing about something. She admitted it: eavesdropping was something she found to be entertaining, because it gave her insights into the people that she had so much trouble relating to.

"Look, it has to be around here somewhere," one man said furtively.

"I know, I know. We'll find it. We have to," said his companion, stuffing a scone into his mouth and taking a huge bite out of it.

"If the _Borealis_ had all that tech in it, imagine what the Aperture labs would have. Hopefully none of it is run down like on the ship…"

Chell suddenly froze. They were talking about the Enrichment Center, she was sure of it. And the name _Borealis_ sounded vaguely familiar as well…

"That would be the _worst_," said the man who had finally swallowed the huge mouthful of scone. "Black Mesa will be finished if we don't find the facility."

* * *

><p><em>AN: I DON'T WANT THEM APPLES._

_Sorry for the late update. I was working the AM² convention and I was completely pooped all weekend. But, the good news is that I used up all that energy I'd been going nuts with (and I also went on a bike ride today), and I think it kinda rebooted my brain. Haha. Also, got to meet Akihiko Yamashita and Miho Shimogasa and go out to dinner with them. They loved my cats and autographed and doodled on a shikishi board for me. : D_

_Again, I'm not too well-versed in the Half-Life universe, but I've been crawling all over the Combine OverWiki for weeks, so I hope it's kinda plausible._

_Portal drawing of the day #1 (comic): http: / / fav. me/ d3kmcpt_

_Portal drawing of the day #2 (human Wheatley): http: / / i. imgur. com/ Oi7u4. jpg_

_Also: Anyone ever watch those Farmer's Insurance tv commercials? I was watching this one where the dude was setting a huge lint ball on fire and thought, "Hey, this dude sounds like Cave Johnson. It's just missing a 'Cave Johnson, we're done here' at the end." So I looked up Cave Johnson's voice actor, and it was the dude from the commercial. XD To watch it, go here: http: / / youtu. be/ 2U1caNuhgnI_

_For reviewer Alien26: I painted an androidy GLaDOS a couple weeks ago. It was mostly a paint-whatever-the-hell-came-to-mind-because-I'm-sick-of-cats thing, but it's a teeny bit how I picture GLaDOS to look as far as this fic goes. I'll do a better one later if you like: http: / / fav. me/ d3jt89l_

_**EDIT: I ended up drawing sketches for Alien26 and thought I'd share with you guys.**_

_Wheatley: http: / / i. imgur. com/ EuTox. jpg  
>GLaDOS: http:  / i. imgur. com/ NtnVe. jpg  
><em>


	9. Decode

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Nine: Decode<strong>

_Thunk._

_Klank._

_Rumble rumble rumble kreshhhhhh._

"_Gahhh! Oh no, oh no! Stop stop stop come back! I haven't finished yet! Arrrrgh! I really wish I wasn't stuck to this rail…!"_

As she watched a video feed of Wheatley trying (and failing) to reattach a Relaxation Center block back to the main structure, GLaDOS chuckled to herself. He'd been at it for about a week now, trying to get some semblance of order back in the Extended Relaxation Center that he'd been in charge of years ago. He hadn't done a very good job of it if the old security footage was anything to go by (surprise, surprise). It was a bit of a pointless exercise that she'd assigned him, though; there was no use for the Extended Relaxation Center anymore, and the only thing that she would really gain out of it being restored was that all those ruined blocks would be more aesthetically pleasing if they were, in fact, not ruined. It also kept the bumbling fool out of her figurative hair, which was always a good thing.

Wheatley gave up and let out a sigh as the Relaxation Unit he'd been trying to reattach crumbled into the pit below, his battered sphere body seeming to droop in its place on the management rail. The little idiot had been doing a lot of sighing recently, and although GLaDOS took great pleasure in knowing it was partly because of her wonderfully cruel decision to keep him out of that android body he grew to love so much, a little twinge of guilt tweaked her conscience at the sight of him looking so depressed about it.

Just a little twinge.

"_GLaDOS?_" he said softly through the communication link.

"It had better not be another question about Chell, because for the last time—she is _not_ in love with me and I am _not_ in love with a lunatic like her," GLaDOS said in irritation. He had asked that question twice more after she had sent him off to clean up the Extended Relaxation Center, because apparently the ever-looming threat of horrific-maiming-by-Pavlovian-conditioning was not enough to silence that single question.

"_Oh no, it's not that this time._ _I…wanted to ask something else_."

"It had better be good."

GLaDOS watched him through the camera feed as he paused to gather his thoughts, swiveling slightly on the management rail as he did so.

"_I wanted to ask...Do you think there are any bits of him left in me? You know…the human me?_" he asked, turning on the rail to look at the camera nearby as a few more Relaxation Units collapsed into the abyss below.

So it seemed that the moron was suffering from a similar identity crisis that she herself suffered from after going through Caroline's memories. GLaDOS certainly underestimated the mor—Wheatley: truth be told, a small part of her expected him to merely take it in stride because she didn't want to believe that the Intelligence Dampening Sphere was actually _a little_ (and even that was generous) intelligent after all. And to her dismay, the conscience she still couldn't get quite used to was making her feel a little _bad_ that he was musing about all of this alone. As much as she hated to admit that Chell's presence had actually helped her get out of that humiliating little funk of hers, it had worked and she'd gone right back to running her tests. So maybe if she let Wheatley come and blither about what was bothering him, he'd stop looking so pathetic and actually get some work done.

"Finish that later. Come back to my chamber," GLaDOS said through the link. And for good measure, she added, "Hurry up before I explode you."

"_Right. Be there in a tick_," he said nervously before quickly zooming out of the video feed.

As she waited for Wheatley to arrive, GLaDOS wondered if there might be any intact memories left in Wheatley's hard disk. She hadn't been enhancing the truth when she told him that those reprehensible scientists didn't even back up the old Wheatley's memories, but if her experiences with Caroline's memories were anything to go by, the way human brains encoded memory and personality made it difficult for a computer to simply execute a delete command and overwrite the memories with a bunch of zeroes without completely destroying the personality in the process—even for a computer with genetic lifeform components like GLaDOS herself. She was actually fairly sure that even if the full memories were unrecoverable, there were likely a few traces left of the old Wheatley in there.

When Wheatley finally returned to the chamber, his blue camera eye was quivering slightly (probably out of fear that he was in trouble for absolutely failing at his given job). "I'm—er—I'm back. Came as fast as I could! You know, just like you said. No need for explosions here!" he said, letting out an irritatingly nervous laugh that made GLaDOS want to fire up the nearest mashy spike plates—which she did, because she liked the sound of them crashing together beyond the Central AI Chamber's walls (and she liked how it made him tremble in fear).

"So. Where were we? You were _just_ telling me what your problem was when I was distracted by three more Relaxation Units falling off the main structure. Which is the opposite of what I told you to do," said GLaDOS, turning her head to fix her camera on him.

"Ah—sorry! I was—I just was wondering if—ah—if you thought there were any bits of the old…_me_…left anywhere. Like inside me. You know, just curious, really...since I used to be a human and all… an assistant human…" he said, trailing off nervously.

"It's…possible."

"I tried to look and I found a bit of data, but I was having trouble understanding it. Actually, couldn't understand any of it. At all. Just a big jumble of ones and zeroes, in fact. Bit embarrassing, really—I'm a computer and I can't understand ones and zeroes," said Wheatley, letting out a laugh that almost turned into a sob before he caught himself and coughed (regardless that, as a sphere, he had nothing to cough up).

"No, you wouldn't be able to. Literally. Your hardware wasn't designed for it and wouldn't have the power for it even if it was," said GLaDOS. "Your processing power is 1/1000 the power of mine. But I'm sure you knew that. You know, from when you put me in a potato and we almost blew up. Something to think about."

He let out another series of nervous laughs, but he managed to get a hold of himself when she menacingly extended her head toward him. "Ah—yes—_ahem_—so do you think—well—since you're _you_ and I'm fairly sure you could do it—actually, I'm _very_ sure you could do it—do you think you could check?"

"Now, why would I do that?" said GLaDOS, tilting her head slightly. "I could just let you think about it. Day and night. Forever. Doesn't that sound _fun?_"

GLaDOS knew she was probably pushing him a little too far considering his current mental state, but she didn't expect that look of absolute dejection that overcame him, and it reminded her of her own pathetic state when Chell caught her compulsively pressing a button to make Weighted Storage Cubes come out of a Vital Apparatus Vent like some sort of drug (button?) addict. That thing called empathy—it was kicking in like a rocket to face, and she didn't like it. At all. Which is to say, she didn't like how utterly wretched he looked (especially when it wasn't completely her fault), nor did she like the effect it was having on her. It was disgusting.

Almost like she actually _cared_.

**- DELETE FROM friends WHERE name = 'Wheatley';  
>ERROR: ACCESS DENIED. HAVE A NICE DAY.<strong>

Not that she expected it would work, but wasn't she entitled to a little wishful thinking once in a while?

"I _could_ look at the data for you," GLaDOS said finally, just when it looked like the little idiot might fall to pieces where he hung on the management rail. "But I would need a direct connection to your core, and you are _not_ getting in that core transfer receptacle—I don't care _how_ pathetic you look. And you look _very_ pathetic already."

"_Please_, isn't there—some other way?" he pleaded, trembling slightly on the rail.

"Whether you know or not has no bearing on who you are. You, the Intelligence Dampening Sphere, are not the same as Millard Wheatley, the moron assistant."

It was obvious from his silence that he never considered this—that simply because he now knew of the existence of the man who was little more than a template with which to forge a personality construct, it didn't mean that he was suddenly a different entity altogether. Though perhaps he was afraid that the shadow of this man, of the bumbling assistant whose mind was obliterated in order to create him, had been pulling the strings all along without him even realizing it. It was the same fear that GLaDOS had upon discovering Caroline's existence deep in a pocket of her hard disks…

Dear god.

Was the moron more similar to herself than she initially thought?

"There _is_ something we can try," GlaDOS said after a long silence. "I can interface with your core using the android body so there won't be any risk of you putting me in a potato. But—" She gave a nearly imperceptible shudder. "—if you want me to decode any memories, you have to share your brain with me. All of it. You won't be able to hide anything from me. And it only works one way, which is good for me but not good for any sense of privacy that may have been programmed into you."

Wheatley looked understandably frightened by the idea, which only made GLaDOS wonder what sorts of interesting things he might have hidden away in his mind (which she would take great pleasure in uncovering), but after a few moments moving back and forth on the rail, he turned to her and nodded his blue eye. "That's—that's fine! Perfectly fine! Nothing to hide here—yeah…yeah, absolutely nothing! So go right ahead!" he said eagerly, though it was clear from the quaver in his voice that the idea terrified him. So with a dark laugh, she flipped a few floor panels up, allowing the android body and core transfer receptacle through as she used the link to Wheatley's core to force him to disengage from the management rail and plummet to the floor. His yelp of pain as he hit the floor was drowned out by the voice of the announcement system as she created a system restore point and initiated the shallow mirroring procedure.

Just as she was unable to stop the double euphoria upon completing a test, she had been so far unable to avoid the searing pain during the core mirroring process and bolted upright as she screamed in pain. "A-are you all right?" Wheatley asked from his position on the floor.

"I'm _fine_," she snapped as she took her body's auxiliary power cable and plugged it in beside the core transfer receptacle. The idiot didn't need to sound so _concerned_.

"Wh-what are you doing?" he sputtered when she put him in her lap and began prying a panel off his back. "That—ah! That actually—it tickles! Stop, stop! Ah—tickles! I'll be honest, I'm feeling a _little_ violated right now. M-more than a little—a-ah!"

"Shut up. I told you that it wasn't going to be good for your sense of privacy. You're _supposed_ to feel violated," she said once the panel finally popped off to reveal the port that the engineers used to upload core programming. With a smirk that Wheatley couldn't see, she carefully picked out a cable from the mass coming out of her head and held the jack in her hand. "I'm going to plug in now. Just so you know."

"Ah—wait, wait! Don't put it in! I—I'm not ready yet!" he said hurriedly. GLaDOS rolled her eyes.

"I already told you that you won't be able to hide anything from me. There's no use trying."

"Ah, right, right. Um—okay! I'm ready! Put it in put it in! Please!" said Wheatley earnestly, and it made her pause a moment in order to push away the disconcerting thought that his words made it sound like he was begging her to do something dirty and indecent to him.

But the thought did not last long, and with another smirk, she plugged the cable into the port.

* * *

><p>Spying was not one of Chell's strong points. She could shoot portals, put cubes on buttons, and defeat highly advanced artificial intelligence constructs that developed passive-aggressive tendencies, but spying?<p>

A little more than she bargained for.

She supposed she should be thankful that the two men she was tailing were so absorbed in what they were looking for that they didn't notice her trailing along in the distance. From what she managed to gather during their short time in the coffee shop, they were two Black Mesa scientists trying to find the Aperture Science Enrichment Center after some _Borealis_ ship thing had been discovered. Apparently Black Mesa or some resistance or the Combine _needed_ what Aperture Laboratories had developed.

Heh.

Wouldn't Cave Johnson get a kick out of that? Probably GLaDOS as well, for that matter. And, Chell had to admit, she too felt a sort of unexpected (and unsettling) pride that she had been a part of Aperture Science, if only as a test subject (and GLaDOS-killer).

She ducked into an alley as her two targets stopped at the very fringe of the town. "The old salt mine was this way, wasn't it?" she heard one man say.

"I'm not sure, nobody really knows anymore…Anyway, I heard they built a new facility. The old mine might just be empty now," said the other.

"We have to look. God dammit, how are we supposed to find an entrance if they didn't give us any equipment? That mine was_ huge_. We'd probably have an easier time of it if we had a drill or something…"

"Oh yeah, let me get a drilling rig out of my briefcase for you, Rob. It's right here next to my calculator."

"God, shut the fuck up. You know what I meant."

Well, it certainly seemed like these two didn't get along very well, which was a good thing since it would make it harder for them to cooperate and find an entrance to the Enrichment Center. The nearest entrance was in the middle of that enormous wheat field (which, incidentally, started at the _other_ side of town), and it was nigh impossible to find it unless you actually knew what to look for. Besides, even if they did find it, it mostly looked like an unassuming, abandoned shed and GLaDOS would likely deactivate the lift should they open the door. Not that they'd be able to pry the door open without any equipment.

She didn't follow when they wandered off away from the town (in the complete opposite direction of the Enrichment Center), though she did linger for a while to watch them walk out of sight as she went over what information she had gathered. From what she understood following her release from the Enrichment Center, Black Mesa's research facilities had been destroyed, but it seemed that Black Mesa still had a presence somewhere if these two scientists were anything to go by. What did they intend to do with whatever technology they found at the Enrichment Center? Turrets seemed straightforward enough for any decent defense contractor to come up with (unless for whatever reason they wanted the talking ones that Aperture had), as did bombs and lasers. Mashy spike plates wouldn't do them any good out in the open. Mobility gel _could_ be useful to them—especially Propulsion and Conversion Gel.

Did they know about the handheld portal device? Did they want that?

Or did they know about GLaDOS and want _her_ instead?

With one last glance in the direction that the two scientists had gone, Chell left the alley and began making her way across town. It would probably be best if she told GLaDOS what was going on as soon as possible, in case she had some sort of defense system she could activate to _discourage_ anyone that came close to the facility from coming any closer, because if Chell knew anything about Black Mesa, it was that they were trouble.

* * *

><p>"<em>Welcome to Intelligence Dampening Sphere, version 2.05_3c. See changelog for details.<em>"

It was certainly odd sharing minds with the idiot—his mental structure was vastly different from her own and it took GLaDOS several processor cycles to orient herself in such a way that she could understand what was going on in his mind. Almost immediately, she understood why her body had corrupted him so quickly; his mind was simple and not designed for the intensive process threading that GLaDOS's body required in order to run the facility. In fact, it seemed that there were only a few threads going on in Wheatley's brain. One process managing the data coming from his Idea Processor, another process handling the instructions from a Good/Bad Idea Controller, and all of this overseen by his personality, which was essentially the core's operating system.

WheatDOS?

GLaDOS could feel him straining against her presence as she delved into his hard disks—she was vaguely aware of his anxious voice echoing through the Central AI Chamber, blabbering alternately about it tickling and it hurting—which made it difficult for her to find the jumble of indecipherable memories that he'd been talking about. "_Relax_, moron," she said in irritation. "It'll hurt even more if I have to force it to find the data you were talking about."

"_Sorry, sorry…"_ came the faint reply.

Immediately, she felt the resistance against her ease up and the data distortions in his hard disks resolving back to normal. His databases were simple enough and actually ran on a simplified version of her own, so it wasn't difficult for her to sort through the data stored in him. All the data seemed normal enough, and when she found an address marked as "The Time I Went Mad," she made a mental note to see what was in there after she finished. But when she found a location labeled only as "Chell," GLaDOS couldn't resist taking a look straight away to see what he had stored in there.

What immediately assaulted her senses were such intense feelings of affection and happiness that GLaDOS immediately pulled out of the address space without bothering to see what memories were cross-referenced in there ("Hey, don't look in there!" she heard Wheatley cry out). The feelings were foreign to GLaDOS and if she wanted to be completely honest with herself, she found herself _slightly_ scared of them and how they made her feel—which is to say, it felt good, but bad in the sense that she should _not _be feeling so good. So it was true that the moron was in love with Chell. Still, GLaDOS wasn't about to do anything to help him with that; if he wanted to act on his disgusting, mushy feelings, then that was his problem and she would _not_ be encouraging him. She even had a head start on not encouraging him by keeping him in a sphere body rather than the android body.

She finally found the jumble of human memory in a remote pocket of his hard disks. The data was nearly incomprehensible, and GLaDOS almost wrote the data off as unrecoverable and completely corrupted until she came across a few sections that she _could_ decipher. Making a small noise of triumph, she activated her auxiliary power feed and began decoding the memories.

A few disjointed and fragmented images from Millard Wheatley's childhood flashed through GLaDOS and Wheatley—there was the image of a young boy's scraped hands outside Buckingham Palace while a pleasant-looking woman wiped them clean, and an image of the same boy's hands, but much older this time, picking apples from a large tree. GLaDOS couldn't help but roll her eyes; it wasn't a surprise that the human Wheatley had loved apples so much if he spent his childhood picking them. After a moment, it became clear that the engineers had managed to remove most of the memories in between his childhood and the procedure to make him into the Intelligence Dampening Sphere—there were absolutely no memories between the apple-picking memory and a fragmented memory of him eating lunch with some Aperture accountants in the Enrichment Center cafeteria.

The memories grew clearer the closer she got to the point where he was taken for the Intelligence Dampening Sphere initiative. The memory of his interview with Caroline was relatively clear (and GLaDOS _still_ couldn't get over the idiocy of "_I'd give the box legs. Yeah—I'll go with that."_). The memories were actually rather uninteresting, and GLaDOS was beginning to feel irritated that she was wasting her time decoding such boring memories after all the fuss he made: Millard Wheatley did not often go out with friends, did not participate in testing after managing to destroy a portal device _outside_ of the testing track, and did not have a girlfriend (or boyfriend, for that matter). In fact, due to the workload after becoming Caroline's assistant, it seemed that much of his time away from the Enrichment Center was spent either at his unkempt apartment or at Caroline's home.

They were so boring that GLaDOS nearly glossed over a memory of him playing with a child's robotics set when she heard a familiar voice.

"_Aww, Wheatie. Follow the directions! You keep messing up the robot._"

"_Sorry! These instructions are just so confusing. I don't understand them one bit…"_

"_Honestly, Wheatley. It's a toy. For children_," came Caroline's exasperated voice from somewhere out of view. "_Even Chell can follow the directions. _How_ old are you?"_

Well, this was interesting. GLaDOS watched in amusement as a young Chell swatted Wheatley's hands away from the robot pieces she was trying to sort out, whereupon he resigned himself to watching her put the robot together without further incident. Even a child thought he was a moron…Though GLaDOS was intrigued to find that in spite of her obvious annoyance, Chell seemed happy enough to have a moron in her company. Maybe that was why the pair got along so well nowadays: the both of them had some memories of each other hidden away in their subconscious minds.

GLaDOS felt Wheatley straining against her again and could faintly hear him saying something or other about Chell and being friends with her, and it was all GLaDOS could do to keep from smashing him where he sat in her lap. "I'm almost done, moron! Calm down!" she snapped, giving him a warning tap and sighing in relief when he relaxed again. True to her word, it didn't take long to get to the last memory hidden in Wheatley's hard disks. The human Wheatley had been distraught in Caroline's office in the middle of absently sorting paperwork when two men wearing security uniforms had walked in and knocked him out with a stun gun without so much as a hello. GLaDOS could only assume that they immediately made him into the Wheatley that she so knew and (did not) love.

But there was one more thing she wanted to take a look at before unplugging herself from his body. Ignoring his increasingly louder protests, she went straight for the address space marked as "The Time I Went Mad" and plunged herself into the memories he had stored there. She was acutely aware of the wanton violation of his personal privacy here, but she wanted to know how the moron remembered that time. For science.

The going was much faster as she had no need to decode the data there, so she quickly did a surface skim of the memory of his time in her body while he wailed and apologized and apologized harder when she got to the part where he transferred her into the potato (and when she went deeper into that memory, it turned out he had felt _incredibly_ satisfied with himself, which made it very difficult for GLaDOS to not immediately rip him to pieces). GLaDOS was actually surprised at how vicious her body had made him—she hadn't thought anything of it as a potato, since she only had 1.1 volts to work with and dedicated all 1.1 volts to thinking of a way to not get blown up, but he'd been so bluntly insulting that between herself and Wheatley, it was a wonder that Chell hadn't simply thrown herself into a pit out of despair. Most of the previous test subjects would have done it after what Wheatley would have put them through.

Speaking of test subjects, GLaDOS was slightly curious as to what his first experience with the testing euphoria was like—was it stronger than what she felt because of his simpler design, or weaker for that same reason?

GLaDOS was so caught up with violating Wheatley's personal space that she didn't realize that the idea she'd just had to go deeper into his memory of the solution euphoria had been approved as a very good idea by the Good/Bad Idea Controller.

And it was too late for her to stop.

She couldn't stop.

_Stop._

When she got to the data in question, that same horrific, disgusting moan broadcasted throughout the entire facility as a brief and repulsive and absolutely amazing flash of euphoria spread through her body. Only this time, Wheatley was making the same noise as well, and GLaDOS couldn't help but feel that there was something cosmically _wrong_ about them both making that disgusting sound together.

"Umm…do I even want to know what you two are doing?"

GLaDOS pulled out of Wheatley's mind to find, to her horror, that Chell was standing nearby with a bewildered look on her face. The girl honestly had the worst timing in the history of all her test subjects. "Did I—er—interrupt something?" Chell asked nervously. "That sounded a little…intimate."

"I was decoding the moron's memories. Get your mind out of the gutter," GLaDOS snarled, ripping her cable out of Wheatley and kicking him out of her lap despite his cries of pain. Her body didn't have the ability to blush, but if it had that function, she would have been beet red by now.

"Was that really what you were doing?" Chell asked suspiciously as she picked Wheatley up and dusted him off.

"She's not lying, that's really what we were doing!" Wheatley said brightly. Seemed he was in a better mood already. Was it related to that solution euphoria or the fact that she just decoded several years' worth of boring memories? "Except that last bit. In that last bit, she was just looking through my memory of when I—ah—when I was a _horrible_, horrible monster, and guess what! I can't feel the solution euphoria when I'm just little Wheatley here, but when I'm hooked up to GLaDOS, the euphoria feels _great! _I'd almost forgotten how _great_ it feels. Actually, I _did_ forget! And now I remember again!"

Yep.

Euphoria.

"You…don't want to kill me again, do you?" Chell asked, frowning and holding him away from her like he could kill her in that little sphere body. What would he do, talk her to death?

"Eh? No! No, no, no! Of course not!" he exclaimed, trembling in his chassis in a panic. "I'd never want to hurt you! Well, I did once, but that was a long time ago and I'm definitely sure that I don't want to hurt you now! Fairly sure that I don't. So don't worry! No Wheatleys killing anyone in here. Not that I could, even if I wanted to. Which I don't!"

"So what did you want today?" GLaDOS said icily as Chell held Wheatley to her stomach with a smile. "Or did you want to just sit here and take up space with your generousness again?"

Chell seemed unfazed by her insult and actually had the cheek to laugh. "No, I just wanted to ask you something," she said, her smile unfaltering. "Actually, I have a lot of things I want to ask after just seeing what I did, but I just have the one for now: do you know anything about a _Borealis?_"

GLaDOS blinked in surprise. "The _Borealis_ is Aperture's research icebreaker ship," she said, frowning. "I lost all contact with it when it disappeared from its drydock. How do you know about it?"

"Listen, I ran into some Black Mesa scientists talking about how the _Borealis_ was found. I tailed them and it looks like they're looking for the Enrichment Center now," said Chell. "What was _in_ the ship? They sounded like they really needed it."

This was bad. If Black Mesa figured out how to use the technology onboard the _Borealis_, all the work GLaDOS put into accelerating Aperture's testing initiative (it was partly why she was created, after all) would go to waste.

"The ship held the experimental Aperture Science Large Scale Quantum Tunneling Device."

Chell arched an eyebrow at her. "Large Scale Quantum Tunneling Device? You mean like…a giant portal gun?"

"'Giant portal gun'? I expected more out of you," said GLaDOS, rolling her eyes. "It's more of a teleporter than a portal gun. I _told_ those idiots that turning on the device had a 90 percent chance of 100 percent failure because it was still in experimental stages, and what did they do? Tell me that science couldn't get done if they were afraid of a few statistics and turn it on anyway. Looks like a few statistics made them very dead. Which works for me."

"Well, Black Mesa is looking for the Enrichment Center. They seemed like they were in a big hurry because more people might come looking, too," Chell said, looking rather concerned. "Do you have some sort of defense system or anything to keep them away?"

GLaDOS fell silent a moment to consider this: there was a surface defense system that she had control over, but the years of disuse and lack of maintenance wouldn't make it very effective. There were Thermal Discouragement Beam arrays concealed underneath the farm fields between the surface light filters, but the targeting systems hadn't been calibrated in years. She supposed that in the event of an all-out attack, she could just activate _all_ of the arrays and burn up any poor souls caught in the grid of deadly lasers, but outside of an all-out attack, that would be like screaming out to the world, "Hey, Black Mesa! Aperture Laboratories is right here for you to steal technology like you've done for years!"

"There is a defense system I can use," GLaDOS said finally, "but I haven't activated it since I started testing. It needs calibration for precision targeting, and to calibrate all of it could take days. Unless…Will these Black Mesa idiots be coming from the town you live in?"

"Yeah, if they ever figure out the right direction to go in."

"Then I can calibrate some of the arrays in the wheat field," said GLaDOS, walking up to Chell and holding out her hands. "I'll put the mor—Wheatley—back into the android so he can help."

She grimaced at the overjoyed whoop that Wheatley let out when Chell passed him over to her. "Shut up," she growled, holding up his sphere body so the pincer descending from the ceiling could pluck him out of her hands and jam him back onto the management rail. "Hurry up and get to the Reassembly Machine—it's already waiting for your core."

As Wheatley sped off ("Thank you thank you thank you!"), GLaDOS turned and deftly caught the four replacement targeting sensors that dropped out of a Vital Apparatus Vent. "How soon do you think they could show up?" she asked, giving Chell a sidelong glance.

"Could be later today, or maybe not for a few days. They didn't have any idea where the Enrichment Center was other than that it was near town."

"Well, they can be taken care of. Actually," GLaDOS added, flashing Chell a devious smile, "there are some guns stored away in the facility. You could use them to brush up on your murdering skills and murder those scientists. For science."

For a murderer, Chell looked surprisingly horrified by the idea. "N-no, I think maybe you can handle that," she said, a nervous smile on her face.

"Oh, so you can murder _me_, but you can't murder two Black Mesa idiots?" When Chell only let out a nervous laugh, GLaDOS allowed herself a laugh as well, clenching and unclenching her fists. "That's fine. I'll _enjoy_ murdering them. Serves them right for putting their dirty hands on _my_ ship."

Though it might be a good idea to keep one of the Black Mesa scientists alive for questioning in order to see what exactly it was they needed Aperture technology for. Or maybe GLaDOS could use them for testing once she viciously wrung all the useful information out of them. Maybe she could pit the both of them against Blue and Orange in a sort of competition to see which team would horribly die faster. Or coat them in Repulsion Gel and watch them bounce around a test chamber…

Further diabolical scheming was forestalled by Wheatley's exuberant arrival. "I'm here! I'm ready!" he said in delight, running toward them, tripping and falling flat on his face, but quickly getting up again and giving Chell a quick hug that she didn't even have time to return before he released her.

"Hold these," GLaDOS snapped, shoving the replacement sensors into his arms before he could give her a hug as well (which he seemed to have every intention of doing; just how happy did that brief bit of euphoria make him?).

When they emerged from the lift to the surface, they were bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun. GLaDOS cast her eyes about for any signs of life—as did Chell while Wheatley rambled about how wonderful it was to be on the surface with them again—but found nothing but the wheat swaying gently in the evening breeze. "Discouragement Beam array D3-05, prepare for manual calibration," said GLaDOS, relaying the command through the wireless link to her body in the Central AI Chamber. Almost immediately, there was the muffled sound of something mechanical clanking into life underground before a square of wheat about five meters square slowly rose up out of the ground. "Keep watch. I don't have many cameras up here," GLaDOS said to Chell as they walked toward the block of wheat that seemed to hover in the air.

Three Discouragement Beam emitters sat on each of the block's four sides, rendered nearly invisible by the wheat surrounding the array. As far as GLaDOS could see—and according to the diagnostic tool running back in her main body—the emitters were fine and the real problem was the targeting sensor, just as she initially expected. She dug it out from underneath a tangle of dirt and roots and found that it was completely unserviceable: the lens was caked over with grime and most of its joints were completely corroded by the years and years of moisture it was subjected to.

"Wow, that looks bad. Wouldn't be able to target anything, would it? Except maybe wheat. Plenty of wheat to target," said Wheatley, handing her a replacement sensor with a foolish grin.

Once the replacement was connected, GLaDOS watched in satisfaction when her main body ran the targeting calibration routine, moving the sensor back and forth and using one of the emitters to give Wheatley a brief zap to the face so that he dropped the replacement cameras with a yelp of surprise. "Looks like it's working just _fine_," GLaDOS said, smirking as Wheatley scrambled to pick up the cameras while the Discouragement Beam array sank back into the ground.

Night had fallen by the time GLaDOS finished changing the sensors on three more of the nearest arrays. Once she verified the last array's sensor was operational (by zapping Wheatley in the foot when he tried in vain to hide behind her) and commanded the array to retract back into the ground, she found that Chell and the moron were sitting amongst the wheat, craning their necks upward and looking up into the night sky. She almost snapped at them for acting like idiots and staring at the tiny specks of light from the balls of gas burning up billions and billions of miles away, but she wasn't sure what made her stop.

A tiny little voice—her voice—telling her that maybe this, whatever this was, was okay.

She sat down in the wheat beside Chell and looked up at the stars dotting the sky and the full moon casting its ghostly light down upon them. The three of them—three friends, though GLaDOS wished it was otherwise—sat there in silence, organic and metallic skin alike gleaming in the moonlight. It was calming in a way unlike anything GLaDOS had ever experienced—not even the screams of test subjects as they fell into the incinerator felt as calming as this.

"GLaDOS?" Chell said quietly. When GLaDOS turned to give her a questioning look, the yellow glow of her eyes reflecting off her and Wheatley's faces, Chell gave her a small smile. "What do you think it'd be like if you didn't have to test?"

In all honesty, GLaDOS was slightly taken aback by her question and felt her mind beginning to fizzle and fog up because of it. To not have to test—it was something she was literally incapable of thinking about, and simply _trying_ to think about it was rendering her mind incoherent. There was nothing for her other than testing; she could distract herself with other things, like defending the facility from Black Mesa, pressing buttons to make Weighted Storage Cubes come out of Vital Apparatus Vents, or eating cake with lunatic former test subjects, but she always had to test. The Itch was ever-present and ever _itchy_, and though she could control its hold over her (unlike a certain moron), she couldn't get rid of it entirely. And it wasn't like she particularly _wanted_ the Itch gone: she enjoyed testing and she enjoyed science, and whether it was of her own volition or due to something the Aperture scientists had hardwired into her didn't matter.

"I don't know," was all she could say.

Chell let out a laugh, turning her gaze back up to the stars. "Is it weird that after it all, I'm a little glad that you had to test? I mean, I might not have met you two otherwise. You know, even if you both tried to kill me. And _yes_, I tried to kill you twice." She laughed again and pat Wheatley's hand, which made him jump in surprise and let out a small, contented laugh.

An uninvited laugh escaped GLaDOS's modulator.

"Yes, it's weird; all that Mobility Gel must have destroyed your mind. You really _are_ a lunatic."

* * *

><p><em>AN: That was super long. Longer than normal. Ahaha. Thanks again to all the reviewers! I love you all for sticking with this rapidly deteriorating fanfic. Also, please point out any typos. I don't have a proofreader other than myself, so yeah. _

_It's a toy! For children! And all depressed Wheatie needed was a little robot se—er—memory decoding. Yep. That's it. Memory decoding. D:_

_So, guys. I finally made a Steam account and linked my PSN account to it, so I can play the first Portal now. XD; Hurray! If anyone wants to be my friend, my display name is 'Integration_' (no quotes, underscore at the end). I was trying to find the PS3 version of Orange Box, but it's a bitch to find and I figured it was cheaper to just buy Portal and hook my laptop up to the tv and play with a PS3 controller. XD_

_I also made a Tumblr account. It's just going to be a doodle dump for the stuff I'm not going to put on DA. Also, it's not up right now, but the next thing I'm posting will be titled "GLaDOS Goes on a Date." Ahaha._

_http: / / did-you-reboot. tumblr. com_


	10. Inside and Outside

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Ten: Inside and Outside<strong>

GLaDOS wasn't sure what annoyed her more: the utter lack of Black-Mesa-scientist murdering over the past week, or the fact that the lunatic former test subject and her buddy the moron were currently sprawled on the floor of the Central AI Chamber, surrounded by sheets of paper covered with crude doodles of various things from both inside and outside the Enrichment Center. She nearly exploded the idiot for having the gall to draw a picture of her lording it over an army of lopsided, squashy turrets (and not to mention, GLaDOS looked absolutely _fat_ in the picture, and she didn't know until then that her central core body could even _look_ fat).

Even so, GLaDOS found herself slightly intrigued by their artistic endeavors—she was built to do science, not to make art, after all—and caught herself peering over Chell's shoulder several times while waiting for Blue and Orange to get reassembled from their latest failure. Chell was definitely the more skilled artist out of the two of them, and while she did have the distinct advantage of being humanoid longer than Wheatley, GLaDOS couldn't help but think that even the human Wheatley would have been terrible at drawing (and would have probably found a way to draw even stick figures incorrectly).

"You sure you don't want to give it a try, GLaDOS?" Chell asked, glancing at GLaDOS over her shoulder. "It's fun."

"You know what else is fun?" GLaDOS said, pulling her head back and tilting it to the side. "Killing Black Mesa scientists."

"I know, I know," said Chell in exasperation, turning back to her drawing of a deer. "They've been wandering around in the fields at the other side of town all week. I heard some people talking about them."

"My offer still stands. I'm sure I find a handgun or a functioning anti-antivenom gun somewhere for you to shoot them with," GLaDOS said, twitching her body back and forth in slight anticipation. "I should know better than anyone that you're good at shooting guns. And murdering things."

With a roll of her eyes, Chell gave a laugh. "The only thing I've ever murdered was you—unless turrets count too—and you're a bigger target than those scientists," she said as she drew trees around her picture of the deer. "Also, you don't move. They can run and hide."

A ripple of irritation passed through GLaDOS at her words: so it was _easy_ to murder her just because she was _large?_

And after a moment, a wide grin slowly spread across Chell's face as she turned to GLaDOS, realization dawning on her.

"Sorry, GLaDOS," she said, visibly struggling to keep a straight face, "but it's true. You're easy to murder because of your unfortunate mechanical structure."

_Clap._

_Clap._

_Clap._

Bravo, Chell.

Bra. Vo.

It all became too much for Chell to handle—she suddenly burst into raucous laughter, curling into a ball and clutching her stomach as her entire body quaked in her mirth. GLaDOS had heard Chell laugh before, but _this_—it was as though the floodgates had been opened, as though the kraken had been released, as though she had been bottling up all the laughter in her life until she was so full to bursting that her one little comment destroyed her pitiful little laugh-bottle. Even Wheatley, who often laughed along even when he hadn't any idea what was going on, looked utterly bewildered at Chell's mad laughter and, understandably, looked a little scared.

"If you injured yourself in that little episode, I _won't_ be fixing you," GLaDOS said frostily, turning away from Chell as her laughter finally died down and she lay panting on the floor.

"Er…are you all right?" Wheatley asked gingerly, like she might suddenly explode into laughter again at the sound of his voice.

"I'm—I'm fine," she gasped, waving his concern away with a limp hand and a tiny laugh. "S-sorry, didn't—didn't mean—to laugh—so hard. Ohh, my stomach hurts…"

She spent a few moments lying in a pathetic heap on the floor before slowly getting to her feet and, to GLaDOS's dismay, proceeding to put a hand on her headpiece. "Looks like we're both fatties," she said brightly, a foolish grin on her face.

"The moron must be rubbing off on you," said GLaDOS, twitching her head in sullen disapproval but allowing Chell to keep her hand there nonetheless. "It's logically impossible for _me_ to be fat, because _I_ don't need to metabolize beef and leaves."

"You want to bring logic into this?" Chell said, arching an eyebrow. "Because listen to this: this statement is—"

There was a sharp feeling of betrayal as panic gripped her processors—immediately, GLaDOS began filling the chamber with loud "lalalalalala" sounds while desperately thinking about things like testing, killing the Black Mesa scientists, ways to torment Wheatley, warming up the neurotoxin emitters, and how this woman that she begrudgingly thought of as her friend was trying to kill her with a logical paradox _which by the way she absolutely was not thinking about definitely not no paradoxes here only testing and morons_ _and maybe she should have used the neurotoxin to kill Chell after all if she was just going to do this to her—_

"—probably going to kill you, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you!"

The "lalala" sounds pouring out of the speakers immediately stopped at the sound of Chell's apology, and GLaDOS pulled herself out of the storm of anti-paradox thoughts to find Chell's arms wrapped around her headpiece and obscuring her camera. "You know, you tried to kill me _three_ times now,_"_ GLaDOS said, trying to pull her head away but finding, to her dismay, that Chell was pulled along as well.

"I know," said Chell, clinging on tighter as GLaDOS irritably twitched her head in Chell's arms. "Probably shouldn't have said that. It's faster than neurotoxin so I really could have killed you. I'm sorry…"

An unfamiliar feeling stirred within GLaDOS.

_It's faster than neurotoxin so I really could have killed you. I'm sorry…_

It was related to her conscience, that much she knew. But it wasn't guilt that she felt this time; it was something else—something that she knew felt bad, but it wasn't quite the feeling of guilt or remorse that she sometimes found herself bogged down with after her escapade as a potato. No, this was something else. She looked to Chell, who had mercifully let go of her head and was giving her an apologetic smile, as though waiting for her to just forgive and forget and say something patently idiotic like "Oh yeah, we're the same, we're both unfortunately structured!"

This feeling.

For the first time, GLaDOS felt shame.

She was _ashamed_.

Her.

GLaDOS.

The highly advanced, sentient artificial personality construct that had absolutely _no_ qualms condemning people and their innocent daughters to horrible deaths via neurotoxin or test chamber or incinerator (and _still_ would have no qualms about it, conscience be damned), brought to feel _shame_ by the one human who had somehow managed to wriggle her way into her friends database when all she had really wanted was to let the girl loose on the surface to wreak her havoc _somewhere else_…And now here she was. Ashamed. Ashamed that after all the (relatively) harmless threats to kill her friend with neurotoxin and whatever else, Chell had turned the tables for once and then _apologized_ for it while GLaDOS sulked like a petulant child.

The feeling was irritating—even more so than the feeling of guilt. For a moment, the thought of exploding the entire facility in a sort of suicide maneuver crossed her mind—but it immediately fizzled out, because being dead was _slightly_ worse than being ashamed, and if that black box was still working, she'd be reliving those moments of shame for the rest of eternity.

Was she going soft?

Because if that was the case, then she _really_ wanted those Black Mesa morons to show up soon so that she'd have someone to kill. Exploding Blue or Orange or both just wouldn't cut it this time.

What was it that people did when they feel like they did something very wrong? Her initial thought was to immediately fill the room with neurotoxin, but neurotoxin wouldn't solve all her problems (even if it did solve many others) and killing Chell was the opposite of what she wanted at the moment. Besides, it didn't seem like an appropriate response to the situation; in fact, she had a sneaking suspicion that killing Chell right now would _increase_ her feelings of shame.

Should she…_apologize?_

…

GLaDOS checked the feed from the security camera hidden outside the wheat field exit.

Nope, still no Black Mesa.

She turned her head back to Chell, who looked slightly perplexed by her silence, before lifting her head higher in preparation for what she was about to do. It would be a real one this time—no sarcasm, no spite—and hopefully it wouldn't kill her.

It had to be done.

Here goes.

Definitely.

Any minute now.

"Sorry."

She expected anything from Chell collapsing into another fit of uncontrollable laughter to a sudden death via complete genetic lifeform failure, but she _didn't_ expect Chell to look pleasantly confused and give a small laugh.

"Sorry for what?" asked Chell. "_I'm_ the one that tried to kill_ you_."

GLaDOS looked from Chell's bemused face to Wheatley, who was sitting on the floor with a similarly confused expression on his face. What was it that she was sorry about, exactly? She couldn't pin down any one thing she was particularly sorry about—she wasn't sorry for putting Chell through testing, because that was what she'd been designed to do and Chell was simply the unfortunate victim of Aperture-related circumstance, and she wasn't sorry for the (relatively) harmless insults she directed at Chell and Wheatley all the time because frankly, they were easy targets (and the moron practically asked for it). So what was it?

Was she sorry that she was acting like a child? Because she wasn't ashamed enough to admit something like that to them—_no_ shame was great enough to allow her to do that.

But seeing Chell's baffled face holding no accusation and no malice (not that Chell's face was particularly good at holding malice in the first place) sent unexpected relief flooding through GLaDOS, almost as though Chell had outright told her that she had nothing to be sorry for. And indeed, Chell simply reached up to pat her headpiece again before smiling and turning back to Wheatley to continue with their drawings. "Who's the lunatic now?" she said as she sat back down on the floor.

It wasn't often lately that GLaDOS felt any emotion from the pieces of Caroline still left in her, but at this moment, those fragments of Caroline still residing in her felt absolutely gleeful and almost…_approving_.

It really was a pity that she wouldn't stay deleted.

* * *

><p>There was a solution to the fattening-via-cake that Chell feared whenever she felt the urge to bake for her Aperture friends. No longer would she risk cake poisoning out of guilt that it would be wasted. It had been an idea that came to her at work while she watched her boss's secretary change the coffee filter in the break room, and it had kept her awake with anticipation up to the end of her shift, whereupon she immediately left to buy what she needed from the grocery store.<p>

Cupcakes.

Red velvet cupcakes to be exact. Little personal red velvet cupcakes that she wouldn't feel as guilty throwing out (or eating).

So one batch of red velvet mix with cream cheese frosting later, Chell stood in her little kitchen and surveyed her work. She'd been left with about twelve cupcakes after halving the original recipe, and they didn't look half bad considering her talent (or lack thereof) in anything remotely artistic, culinary or otherwise. They didn't look lopsided like all the normal cakes she tried to make, and it was much easier to just scoop frosting onto a cupcake than to ice an _actual_ cake. With any luck, GLaDOS wouldn't label them as Lunatic Cupcakes (the same way she labeled the first cake Chell made, as well as all subsequent cakes), but Chell wasn't going to hold her breath on this one because it would likely result in horrible asphyxiation.

With three cupcakes safely tucked away in a plastic container nestled in her messenger bag, Chell cheerfully locked her front door and began making her way to the wheat field. She surreptitiously cast her eyes about as she walked—she'd been doing so ever since the Black Mesa scientists had appeared, just in case there were more of them slinking around the outskirts of the little town. Fortunately, it seemed that there were only the two scientists that she tailed two weeks back and it seemed that they were currently nowhere near the route wheat field. But, just to be sure, she decided to take a more roundabout path to the field than normal in case she was being followed.

It was true that she didn't want the two scientists to find the Enrichment Center, but she was ambivalent as far as _why_ she didn't want them to find it. Part of her worried about what they might do to GLaDOS and Wheatley and all of Aperture's technology if they ever got in, and the other part of her worried what _GLaDOS _might do to the scientists once they got there. The first and second times that she had killed (or attempted to kill) GLaDOS, she'd been too busy worrying about securing her own life that she didn't think about what she was really doing, but now that her life was not currently endangered and she now knew that there was a sort of odd friendship to be had with GLaDOS and Wheatley, she was free to ponder the ramifications of the GLaDOS-killing (and Wheatley-killing) and the potential scientist-killing.

She had truly been horrified with herself when she nearly sprang that logical paradox on GLaDOS as part of a petty retaliation to GLaDOS's words—she really should've known better after GLaDOS nearly killed herself in her attempt to disable a power-mad Wheatley with the paradox. Chell was no murderer despite GLaDOS's insistence (really, by now it sounded like a term of endearment), and she truthfully did not want the blood (or semiconductors?) of _anyone_ on her hands, human or AI alike—not even if that blood belonged to Black Mesa scientists that in all likelihood would treat GLaDOS and Wheatley with the same tact that the Aperture Scientists had.

Which is to say: with absolutely no tact at all.

And speaking of GLaDOS—it certainly had been odd that she'd suddenly apologized when it was Chell who had nearly killed her. It made her wonder if GLaDOS was having another crisis that was upsetting her...Was it something that Chell said? Well, obviously it was something that she'd said; she _did _say the first half of that logical paradox, after all, but her AI friend had fallen silent and seemed to sag in her body prior to her unexpected apology. It might be a good idea to ask her about it while Wheatley is off doing some work…

"Now, where are you off to, girlie?"

Chell jumped in surprise and wheeled around to find those two Black Mesa scientists that she had been _expressly_ _looking out for_ standing behind her. It seemed that they had been partially concealed by the pile of rubble she had just passed on her way to the wheat field, and she'd been so sure that she was all clear upon reaching the edge of town that she didn't even give a second glance at the pile of crumbling cinder blocks and asphalt. Despite their disheveled clothes and weary faces, the both of them looked exceedingly smug and it made Chell's skin crawl.

One was also holding a handgun, and it was pointed right at her.

It was amazing how quickly her old testing habits emerged; when faced with near-certain death, instinct told her to keep absolutely silent and not give them the satisfaction of a reaction. And indeed, it took her a moment to find her voice, almost as though it was leaving of its accord to wait while she handled the situation. "What do you want?" she said coldly, giving the gun-toting scientist an outright glare.

Talk about tempting fate.

"What could a pretty little thing like you be doing in a big old wheat field like this?" asked the scientist with the gun. He was a lanky man with pasty white skin and a square face that wouldn't have been unpleasant to look at if he didn't have such a self-satisfied expression on it. His back was slightly hunched—as though it had stuck that way after spending his days huddled over whatever science he worked on—and he held the gun in his hand with the air of a man who had never held a gun in his life. Chell was reasonably confident that she would be able to hold her own against him in a fist fight—but with a gun? Even a moron could pull a trigger, and despite this man's awkwardness, a gun was a gun no matter how awkward its gunner was. The other scientist was similarly awkward, but in an almost completely opposite way: his face and gut were much rounder, and though he wasn't hunched like his taller companion, he was awkward because of the timid way he held himself. Though if _this_ guy attacked her, Chell was sure she'd be able to outrun him without a problem.

"I happen to like sitting out here," Chell retorted. "Is that a problem?"

"Oh, it's not a problem at all," said the thinner man. "We're just curious is all."

"So pointing a gun at me is being curious?" said Chell as coolly as she could while panic began welling up inside her. "I'd hate to see what you're like when you're more interested."

"Well, there's actually something about you that interested us," said the fatter man. He had a sort of vague and nasally New England accent that, combined with the smug expression on his and his friend's faces, made him sound like—well—an asshole. "See, we heard from someone in town that you showed up out of nowhere from this very wheat field, and we're _very_ interested as to why you've been going back."

These two jerks sounded a little too big for their britches, especially considering that they hadn't been important enough for Black Mesa to give them any proper equipment to find Aperture Laboratories. It was making it more and more difficult for Chell to summon her voice to speak to them and their arrogant faces. "Why? It's just a wheat field," she finally managed to say once her brain remembered how to make sounds come out of her throat.

"Well, if it's just a wheat field, we can go with you, right?" said the gunman, twitching the gun slightly.

Chell narrowed her eyes at them, hoping that her silence while she tried to force her voice to work was taken as a dramatic silence that communicated to them how loathsome she found them to be. "I—take it—that's not a _request_," Chell said.

"She's a smart one, isn't she, Rob?" the fat one said.

Her mind was racing as she tried to think of a way to not lead them to the Enrichment Center while also not getting shot by these two men that looked like they'd be all too happy to do so if given a reason. She could lead them to some empty patch of field far away from the entrance, but they knew that _she_ knew something and might shoot her if they realized she was giving them the runaround. But if that's what it took to keep GLaDOS and Wheatley out of their hands, Chell had no problems taking a few bullets for them. As far as she was concerned, she would be dead already if it hadn't been for those two (in so many more ways than one).

"I'm just—going to be sitting—in the middle—of the field—to watch the sun set," said Chell, inwardly grimacing at her quickly-retreating powers of speech. "If—that sounds interesting—to you—then be my guest."

"You know, I think it does. Let's go," said Rob, gesturing at the field with his gun.

So Chell found herself trying with all her might to look cool and collected while she led the pair into the wheat field, the scientists trailing along behind her with the gun pointed right at her back. There was a Discouragement Beam Array that GLaDOS had calibrated that would be far enough from the lift shed that the shed wouldn't be visible—with any luck, the sensors would pick up on movement and maybe GLaDOS could zap them before they shot her. It was just a matter of remembering where the array was located, so Chell deeply hoped that her gut instinct and her relatively dependable memory (both of which haven't failed her yet) were leading her in the right direction.

She finally picked an unassuming patch of wheat and sank down to the ground facing the slowly setting sun, thanking the stars or the gods or whoever might be in charge of the universe for giving her the urge to bring drawing supplies along with her, which she pulled out of her bag to nervously begin drawing a sketch of the wheat field sunset. The two scientists hadn't sat down with her, and she could feel their eyes boring into the back of her head while she did her best to look like an actual landscape artist and not just an idiot with the artistic skills of a child. Things weren't looking good for her, though; their patience was wearing thin if their irate whispering was anything to go by.

They knew. They knew she knew, and they were getting irritated that she was sitting there drawing pictures…

The tip of the gun pressed against the back of her head.

"No more games," Rob hissed. "Take us to the laboratory. That's where you came from, wasn't it?"

"I—don't know—what laboratory—"

Chell was cut off when Rob pushed harder with the gun, forcing her head forward. "You know _exactly_ what we're talking about. Aperture Laboratories. Take us there or I'll blow your brains out."

Her voice wouldn't come out.

Was she going to die a mute (again) lunatic without even the satisfaction of telling Rob and his fat companion to go fuck themselves?

Suddenly, there was the muffled sound of something mechanical whirring into life underground. Rob pulled the gun away in surprise, and once he did so, Chell's instincts took over: she quickly rolled to the side and crouched low as Rob staggered away from the block of wheat rising out of the ground about twenty feet away from them. She saw her opening as Rob flailed about in shock—with a soundless grunt, she sprang up, grabbing Rob's hand and giving him a swift kick in the back of his knee as she frantically tried to wrestle the gun out of his grasp. Rob's companion cried out in pain as two Discouragement Beams went right into his chest, while Rob got a face full of laser beam himself.

He was stronger than he looked and held onto the gun for dear life even as the Discouragement Beam discouraged the side of his face, screaming in pain but clinging doggedly on even as he and Chell tumbled to ground. She desperately kicked and stomped at his face as she tried to pry the gun out of his vice-like grip while he writhed around in an attempt to escape the laser. But abruptly, he managed to jerk his head out of the way if even for an infinitesimal moment; the laser wasn't able to keep up with his sudden movement and Chell found herself arching her back in pain as the laser raked down her back and part of her leg—for a moment, her only thought was how much more powerful these lasers were compared to the ones in the testing chambers and that she really would have died during testing if GLaDOS used _these_ lasers there instead.

Immediately the Discouragement Beam disappeared as Chell's grip on Rob's hand loosened—Rob took full advantage of this and wrenched his hand out of her grasp, scrambling to his feet and aiming the gun at her. But moving away from Chell was what doomed him: as soon as his limbs were no longer tangled with hers, three Discouragement Beams immediately tore into his face and chest while he howled in pain and fell to the ground.

But not before pulling the trigger of the gun.

There was a deafening _BANG_ and a searing pain shot through Chell's back and chest. She found herself thrown forward into to the ground, either from the force of the bullet or the shock of actually getting _shot_. Panic gripped her heart as she lay on the ground trying to process what had just happened to her—it was getting difficult to draw breath and her vision began swimming while she felt something warm spreading out across her back. She was hardly aware of Rob's terrible screaming or of the horrible gurgling sound he made when the laser burned through his throat; instead she tried desperately to get back onto her feet, thinking only of somehow making it back to the lift so that she could warn her friends that Black Mesa knew more than she had initially reported—

She had to get back there before she died. Her only thought as she staggered through the wheat was how she had to get back—how she had to get back to them—

She had to get back _home._

Chell collapsed, gasping for breath and trying to keep her eyes open in spite of all the wounds making her face contort in pain. She wanted to cry out, to be able to whimper in pain if only for the consolation of hearing her own voice before she died, but instead of sound coming out of her throat, the metallic taste of blood bubbled up into her mouth…

Her vision began fading as she lay gasping in the midst of the wheat, but she made one last effort to look toward the lift shed and thought she could make out two blurry figures running toward her before everything went dark.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Aaaahhhh, me GLaDOS voice is slipping! Anywho, sorry the update took so long. Last week was a bad week at work and I couldn't make any words come out. D: Also, the number of tabs I have open whenever I'm writing is…a lot. I had like 3 tabs about cake and icing open, 4 about gunshot wounds to various parts of the body (and how painful they are), 3 about gun silencers, a few about semiconductors and integrated circuits and I forgot why I even opened _those_, and I think I had about 3 tabs about apples open when I was writing the apple rant. I also spent like 10 minutes listening to videos of gun silencers and I didn't even use it…_

_Many thanks to Faux Promises. I had a vague idea as to where to take the chapter, but after we had a bunch of chat sessions about GLaDOS and other things, I took it this way. : D We also talked a bit about what would happen if we were test subjects…If I was a test subject, I'd be so badly Stockholmed for GLaDOS that by the end of it, I'm sure I'd be like, "GLaDOS, I'll be better than all your other test subjects! Please don't be disappointed with me!" And then when I fall into the incinerator, I'd be sad because I disappointed her so badly that she didn't want me anymore. : (_

_For reals this time: the story is almost over. Considering how this chapter went and where I cut it off, I might split the last chapter into two, BUT THAT'S IT. I think. Preeeetty sure. Fairly sure._

_Anyone ever been to the Portal kink meme? Hahaha. I like going to see the hilarious things people ask for. I was drawing artfills for a bunch of prompts, but usually people write stories for 'em. And not all of it is dirty stuff—I drew a fill for one about cemeteries being peaceful and I thought it was really…touching? I dunno, not exactly touching, but not quite…anything else. Anywho, if you're into that kinda thing, take a look. _


	11. Serenade

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Eleven: Serenade<strong>

Those_ bastards._

"_INITIATING SHALLOW MIRROR INTO MOBILE CORE. MOBILE CORE, ARE YOU READY TO BEGIN THE PROCEDURE?_"

"YES, JUST DO IT ALREADY OR I'M GOING TO DISABLE YOU!"

"…_PROCEEDING WITH SHALLOW CORE MIRROR."_

GLaDOS hadn't even finished screaming before she was on her feet and bolting for the portal guns she kept in the back of her chamber. She snatched one and shot a blue portal onto the wall of the chamber before dashing into the lift, Wheatley following closely behind her and clutching the sentry turret she had given him to point at the Black Mesa morons in the event that they were not sufficiently discouraged by the Discouragement Beams. She clenched her fists and irately rattled the thick cables spilling out of her head as the lift clanked slowly up to the surface, while Wheatley bounced fretfully on the balls of his feet beside her. Couldn't this thing move any faster? This anxiety—the last time she'd felt anything even remotely similar was when Chell somehow escaped the incinerator at the end of her testing track, but back then GLaDOS had simply been worried for her own personal well-being.

This was different.

Her friend was out there fighting off a man with a gun, and GLaDOS absolutely _hated_ the idea. How _dare_ those Black Mesa idiots even think to put their dirty hands on her favorite test subject and threaten her life like that? It was infuriating because (1) Chell was not _theirs_ to kill, and (2) GLaDOS did not currently want Chell dead in the first place.

She and Wheatley practically leapt out of the lift once it stopped moving and opened its door, immediately running in the direction of the Discouragement Beam array that had been activated. Wheatley began trailing behind—his body was an older prototype and was heavier than hers, and GLaDOS still hadn't bothered to update his template with the better joints that she used in her own—but she ran on nonetheless, head-cables streaming out behind her as she pushed the android body harder than she ever had before. And in no time at all, the Discouragement Beam array slowly came into view, lasers conspicuously not lasering anything at the moment.

Horror, rage, terror, panic—GLaDOS wasn't sure what the hell it was she was feeling right now, but it didn't matter. She skidded to a halt, her feet gouging out dirt and wheat stalks and sending them scattering into the air as she knelt down beside Chell's bloody, gasping form. Blood was blossoming from the gunshot wound in her back, and the long hole burnt into her shirt by the laser revealed her raw, blistering skin and a deep—though thankfully small—gouge where the laser managed to burn through her skin and into the underlying tissue. GLaDOS glanced down at her face to see if she was still conscious and found Chell's eyes staring vaguely into space, her pupils dilated and her face ashen.

"Oh god, she's bleeding—that's blood, right? I-is she all right, GLaDOS?" said Wheatley once he finally arrived and set the turret down. "Tell me she's all right—she has to be all right!"

"Shut up and pick her up. Be careful," GLaDOS snapped, getting to her feet and aiming the portal gun at the ground. Violet particles fizzled into the air when GLaDOS attempted to shoot a purple portal into the ground. She let out a noise of frustration—all the interference from the wheat stalks made it impossible for the ground to conduct a portal.

"GLaDOS, what do I do? Tell me tell me, she's bleeding an awful lot and it looks painful!" Wheatley said frantically, nearly dancing on the spot with Chell hanging limp in his arms.

She cast her eyes about for something to put a portal on and was about to tell him to just run back to the lift when her eyes fell on the Discouragement Beam array. The top cover of the array was designed with hinges so it could flip up for easy access to the array's internal components, and the backside of that panel was flat and _should_ conduct a portal. Stepping over the dead body of the gunman (and taking deep pleasure at how horribly the lasers had disfigured his face), she felt around the Beam array for the latches to release the cover. Once she found and released them, she heaved the top layer of the array up, wheat and all, to reveal the array's inner components and, more importantly, the smooth underside of the panel. When, to her relief, she shot a portal at it and found herself looking into the Central AI Chamber, she used the link back in her main body to lower the array down to ground level.

"Take her to the infirmary," said GLaDOS, shooting another portal at the panel when the one already there disappeared. "I'll be there as soon as I take care of _these_ two." She shot a distasteful look at the body of the gunman.

Wheatley wordlessly nodded and disappeared through the portal while GLaDOS knelt down to quickly examine the lanky scientist. He was very definitely dead—the laser, in addition to completely disfiguring half of his face and most of his torso, had left a gaping charred hole where his throat used to be. She let out a tiny noise of amusement.

Serves him right for shooting _her_ test subject.

After unceremoniously dumping the dead scientist and his gun through the portal to the chamber (and smiling darkly at the satisfying _whump_ that his body made when it hit the floor), she quickly went to examine the fat one. "Oh, you're alive," she said when she found him lying on the ground, his breathing shallow but his eyes glazed over, half closed and staring off into nowhere. While it was too bad that she hadn't killed them all in one shot, it might do some good to keep this one alive, partly to interrogate him about what it was that Black Mesa wanted, but mostly to conduct a new experiment to see how well a fat man would hold up to getting the ever-living shit beaten out of him with a Weighted Storage Cube.

It was a little more difficult for GLaDOS to get this man through the portal—it seemed that maybe this one had a _bit_ too much cake to eat—but she finally got him through and left him lying on the body of his companion while she retrieved Chell's bag, hastily stuffing the papers strewn among the wheat back into it and slinging it over her shoulder. Satisfied that all obvious traces of any non-wheat presence were gone, she gave one last look around before picking up the turret and stepping through to the Central AI Chamber.

She placed the turret beside the two scientists and immediately went to the core transfer receptacle plug herself in and resynchronize with her main core. After yelling at the announcement system to skip all the pleasantries about asking her unresponsive main body if it wanted to resynchronize, one synchronization later and she was back in full control of the facility. As she deactivated the active Discouragement Beam array and activated the medical systems in the infirmary to prepare for Wheatley's arrival, she used a pincer to roughly drag the hardly-clinging-to-life scientist toward the center of the room before flipping up a few ceiling panels and dropping a glass booth (recycled from the Intelligence Dampening Sphere Failsafe) around him. The man would need some urgent medical attention in order for him to live long enough for her to perform her little _experiment_ on him, but he would stay alive for at least a little bit longer even if she just left him there.

"_GLaDOS, tell me what to do—what should I do?"_ came Wheatley's voice through the infirmary's microphones.

"Lie her on her side and get the basin of water from the dispensary. I'm filling one right now," GLaDOS said as the delicate arms of the infirmary system descended down toward the nearest bed. Without a word, Wheatley gently laid Chell on her side and, after fixing her legs and arms so that they weren't splayed everywhere, he ran off.

The Enrichment Center's infirmary was, fortunately, state-of-the-art (at the time of construction) and largely within GLaDOS's direct control (and how _fun_ it had been to lock employees out of the infirmary when she started neurotoxin therapy on them). It almost seemed counter-intuitive that Aperture Science had invested so much money in the very best medical equipment, but if the archived records were anything to go by, they got the best equipment in order to better observe what kinds of effects their science was having on people's bodies and _not_ out of any particular concern about the health hazards of the facility. The infirmary had also been outfitted with a sort of pneumatic tube system similar to the rest of the facility, allowing her to drop several packets of gauze from the Medical Apparatus Vent above Chell's bed.

She used one of the infirmary arms to pull Chell's shirt up and used the little laser attachment on one of the arms to cut the shirt and her bra away (and hoped that Wheatley wouldn't be so shocked to see her topless that he dropped the bowl of water). GLaDOS worked as quickly as she could—she pressed a wad of gauze onto the bullet's entry wound in her back while attaching heart monitor electrodes to her skin and an oxygen mask onto her face as a scanner attached to one of the arms swiveled around Chell's body. It was clear that she was going into shock: her pulse was weakening in spite of her elevated heart rate, her blood pressure was dropping, and it looked like she was beginning to sweat. _Definitely_ not good if GLaDOS couldn't stop the bleeding—much of the blood stored in the blood banks was unfit for transfusion, either due to blood type incompatibility, contamination after the facility was nearly destroyed (twice), or due to the blood being experimental (and infused with things like fish DNA, trace amounts of enriched uranium, or essence of ghost pepper).

"_I have the water. What should I—bloody hell! Wh-wh-where did her shirt go?_"

It was difficult to suppress the urge to destroy the moron for nearly dropping the basin of water when he returned. "Be quiet and soak these towels in the water," GLaDOS said irately as she dropped two small towels sealed in a sterile plastic wrapper out of the vent before returning to what she was doing.

"_Will…will she be okay? Is it serious?_"

"Oh, it's not serious at all. She only got shot in the back and burned with a deadly laser. I've seen her get up from worse," said GLaDOS, rolling her camera.

"_Really? I thought that all sounded a bit more serious, actually…Brilliant! That's really great!"_

"It _is_ serious, moron," GLaDOS snapped, swiping at his head with one of the free arms. "She's lost a lot of blood, has second and third degree burns, and oh—look at that. A collapsed lung, too. Here—put pressure on the bullet wound," she added before he could start panicking (which he looked to have every intention of doing).

He seemed a bit hesitant at first to touch her, almost as though he thought she'd combust if he did, but after a quick slap to the back of the head with one of the infirmary arms, he gingerly pressed the wad of gauze against Chell's back. _"A collapsed lung? That sounds awful—can she still breathe? Is it okay for me to be pressing on her back like this? Wh-what if she—_"

"_Shut up_," GLaDOS interrupted. "Keep putting pressure so that the bleeding will stop. It will _help_ her breathe now that you're plugging up the hole."

"_Right. W-will do. But—ah—aren't you going to get the bullet out?" _he asked, glancing vaguely at the blank monitor in the room.

"No. It's more likely to kill her than help her if I try," said GLaDOS as she took the damp towels and gently draped them over the burns and blisters on Chell's back.

"_Aren't bullets—well—bad? Fairly sure that it's never a good thing when bullets go into humans. In fact, turrets are always shooting bullets at humans. Sort of what they're built for and all. You know, to shoot things. Like people. Or monitors._"

GLaDOS let out an exasperated sigh while she attached an intravenous drip to a vein in Chell's arm—it was always nice when Wheatley was depressed or scared because he tended to talk_ less_, but it seemed that his motor mouth was returning now that Chell looked to have a reasonably good chance of surviving. "She'll be fine. Now _shut up_, because I don't want to have to blow you up while she's like this."

To her immense relief, Wheatley finally fell silent and focused on keeping pressure on Chell's back. Her breathing was still shallow—one of her lungs had collapsed when the bullet went into her back, but fortunately it hadn't pierced all the way through to the lung. Nothing a chest tube wouldn't fix once the hole in her chest cavity was sealed. There was still the matter of the laser burns, however; Chell was going have some nasty blisters to deal with and would likely need to have skin grafted over the small patch of skin that had gotten burned right through. But, all in all, GLaDOS thought Chell was _pretty_ fortunate that all this had happened near the Enrichment Center (barring the fact that half Chell's injuries were due to the Enrichment Center's defense mechanisms).

It was almost laughable how much effort GLaDOS was putting into keeping this lunatic alive. She was just a fragile, short-lived human, after all—one that had tried to kill her _three_ times now—and yet GLaDOS couldn't help but make sure that her life turned out as _long_ as possible within its human limitations. Every so often she'd allow herself a few processor cycles worth of speculation and wonder what her life might have been like had Chell never become a test subject. Considering the caliber of Aperture's typical test subjects, it was very likely that she'd still be stuck in that testing loop with those insufferable personality cores attached to her body. It was much better to answer to only one voice—her own—regardless of how irritating that conscience was. She sometimes heard Caroline, of course, but her severe fragmentation made her voice more like a vague whisper than a voice like a personality core.

So even if she had to deal with a dangerous lunatic and an idiotic moron, it was _slightly_ better than what might have been. A little bit.

Then again, maybe she was thinking like this because she was in a good mood. She had a Black Mesa scientist to _experiment_ on now, after all.

* * *

><p><em>How…annoying.<em>

Experimentation on the Black Mesa scientist, regrettably, could not proceed until he was, in fact, conscious.

So GLaDOS found herself sitting and waiting in the infirmary at Chell's bedside, wirelessly observing Blue and Orange as they tested to pass the time. It felt…less_ bad_ to be sitting there in the room with Chell and Wheatley (and the unconscious Black Mesa scientist who she banished to the far corner of the infirmary). Wheatley had pressed a chair against the side of the bed and sat there looking utterly dejected, his body drooping as he held one of Chell's hands in his own. Neither of them had spoken in over six hours: instead they quietly sat there in odd solidarity amid the silence that was punctuated only by the beeping of the heart monitor, sitting motionless except to replace the damp towels covering the burns on Chell's back.

It was really just a waiting game now—Chell had finally stopped bleeding from the gunshot wound so that the wound could be properly sealed, and if her luck held out, the chest tube would get the air out of her chest cavity so her lung could reinflate. It probably wouldn't be much longer before she woke up, and once she did, GLaDOS would treat her to quite a show of Black Mesa scientist experimentation (using a Weighted Storage Cube weighed down with blocks of pure lead). Really, what could be better than waking up and then being serenaded by the screams of a had-too-much-cake-to-eat scientist? That was orders of magnitude better than any overly sentimental song a guitarist could produce as far as GLaDOS was concerned, and it was the least she could do after Chell had been so generous as to deposit the scientists on Aperture's doorstep.

Still, a guitar serenade would be something, wouldn't it? She taught all those turrets how to sing, after all, so how hard could playing the guitar be?

It'd be great: a heart-rending guitar serenade accompanied by Black Mesa man's horrible screams.

"_GLaDOS?_" came Wheatley's voice through to her head.

"_Why are you using the link?"_

"_It's…I don't know, actually. Thought it would be—ah—better? I don't want to wake her or anything like that…" _He raised his gaze toward her, his eyes casting a faint blue glow over her in the dimmed light of the infirmary.

"_What do you want?"_

"_I—can you show me how to, er, use a gun?"_ he asked, though he immediately turned away in embarrassment.

Well, this was interesting.

"_Why? You'll probably just shoot Chell on accident, and if I wanted that, I'd put a turret in front of her."_

"N-no! I won't shoot her! That's why I'm asking you to show me how!" he blurted, his voice piercing the silence of the infirmary as he jerked his gaze back to GLaDOS. There was frustration in his voice—desperation, almost—and it was very different from how GLaDOS recalled him ever being. "I just…I don't know how to do much of anything, really—you know that. I—I can't do anything to help her. In fact, I think I might have almost _killed_ her more than I've ever helped her. I want to…to be able to protect her."

Wheatley looked so determined that his face mirrored that of Chell's own testing face, and if GLaDOS was completely honest with herself, she was actually a little surprised. It _probably_ wouldn't hurt to teach him how to shoot a gun—not that GLaDOS had ever shot one before (apart from the portal gun), but she had access to all sorts of gun blueprints and there was plenty of old testing footage of subjects and test proctors shooting guns, so it wouldn't be hard to figure out how exactly to do it. Truth be told, it might actually be _fun _to shoot one. Into the Black Mesa scientist. For when she was finished beating the shit out of him with the Storage Cube.

"I'll…think about it."

"Ah—great, then! Great. _Brill_iant. I—uh—thank you." He flashed her a grateful smile before turning his attention back to Chell, his body drooping less than it had been before and the smile lingering on his face. The fact that he so readily assumed that her words would be leaning toward him learning to shoot a gun rather than him exploding into pieces may be a testament to the odd and slightly strained friendship that had (to her dismay) grown between them, and it made GLaDOS worry (again) that she was going softer than the insides of a roasted marshmallow. What did he think she was, some endearingly sharp-tongued matron figure (with maybe one too many cats) who was actually a really great person underneath her icy exterior and had plenty of relevant life experience that she was just _itching_ to share with him?

He certainly acted like he thought that on some days. Maybe throwing him onto a testing track filled with Thermal Discouragement Beams, mashy spike plates, and a couple dozen turrets would knock that right out of him.

It was actually a very attractive idea that GLaDOS might have actually gone through with (since she was getting a little irritated by Blue's and Orange's disgustingly _human_ interactions with each other), but it seemed that Wheatley's little outburst did exactly what he'd been trying to avoid by using the mental link: Chell stirred, groggily opening her eyes and grimacing when she tried to move and discovered that her back was causing pain that looked to be about an 8 on a pain scale (and, in fact, she made the corresponding face). "No, no, don't move! Not the best idea, considering all the things that happened to you. You've got a bullet in you and a gimpy lung—sounds terrible, but GLaDOS stuck a tube in you and said you'll be fine," Wheatley said hurriedly as he awkwardly tried to keep her from trying to sit up without actually touching her. "Actually, you might think that getting a tube stuck in you sounds terrible too, doesn't it? Absolutely awful. But it's not! Er—no, don't take the oxygen mask off, you need it to breathe and all…"

GLaDOS got to her feet, her eyes fixed on Chell's face as she pulled the mask off. She was visibly distraught, her lips moving but no sound coming out of her mouth, and her eyes—she stared up at GLaDOS, her eyes begging, _pleading_ while she desperately tried to speak. "Chell—you can't speak?" GLaDOS said quietly. Chell nodded, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Wh-what? Did the brain damage come back? But nothing even happened to your head! Do bullets cause brain damage?" Wheatley asked in alarm. "Maybe a simple word, then? Say 'apple.' That's simple, isn't it? A-and don't jump this time, because you'll disturb the tube in your chest."

Chell's lips formed the word, but no sound came out of her throat.

The heart monitor began beeping faster. Chell was panicking.

"Calm down," GLaDOS said, standing at Wheatley's side. "I scanned your whole body and there was nothing wrong with your larynx. And you don't have any brain damage either, even if you trying to protect the facility makes it look that way. Lunatic."

GLaDOS's words had the desired effect on Chell, because she gave a silent laugh and seemed momentarily distracted—at least until she realized that her laugh made no sound, whereupon she continued where she left off and started panicking again. "You need to _calm. Down," _GLaDOS said, putting a hand on Chell's arm. "We've already established that you can be a _vocal_ murderer, so it's just a matter of figuring out why you're a _mute_ murderer again."

Fortunately, Chell's capacity to understand logic far surpassed Wheatley's, so even though he was still blithering on about brain damage, she seemed to already be calming down. "You'll be fine as long as you stay here and don't move," GLaDOS continued after shooting Wheatley an irritated glare. "The gunshot wound looks like it'll heal well, as will the laser burns, and your lung should reinflate soon. You should be grateful that you decided to get shot on top of the Enrichment Center." Chell rolled her eyes and very much looked like she wanted to make some sort of retort, and in fact she started trying to make one before remembering her voice (or lack thereof) and letting out a sigh.

It was a little disappointing for GLaDOS to find that her dangerous lunatic was now a dangerous _mute_ lunatic again. Bit of a pity, actually; she'd been looking forward to hearing Chell laugh (or scream in horror—anything would do, really) when she started work on the Black Mesa scientist. Still, with any luck it wouldn't be hard to find the source of Chell's vocal problems—she'd regained the powers of speech after being let loose to wreak havoc on the surface, after all. Perhaps it was some sort of psychosomatic response to stress. She'd been removed from the source of the stress, which had allowed her voice to return, so in that same vein…maybe her voice would come back once it sank in that there were no gun-toting scientists out to shoot her here in the Enrichment Center. There were plenty of other things that could shoot her here, of course, but she seemed relatively well-adjusted in that regard so hopefully she hadn't regressed.

"Ah, GLaDOS?" said Wheatley, turning to look up at her. "I think she—er—is asking about that Black Mesa scientist. Or, alternatively, a mashy spike plate. I'm not particularly good at charades, it seems."

Chell rolled her eyes again and gave Wheatley a look that plainly said, "_Really?_"

"The fat one is still alive," GLaDOS said, glancing over to the far corner. "I was going to ask him a few _questions_ once the both of you were awake. That is, if he makes it. It turns out that the Discouragement Beam nearly discouraged through his chest and abdominal cavity. He'd probably be dead if he wasn't so generously proportioned."

At that, GLaDOS turned and took a seat in her chair again, leaving Wheatley to ramble to Chell about whatever it was he wanted to ramble about (charades, actually—he spoke of how, back in the days before Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, he hadn't been very good at charades because he'd been a sphere and lacked any body parts with which to play). It was interesting to see that Chell wasn't as irritated by his inane chatter as she should have been—GLaDOS wondered if maybe, in light of her current mute condition, she was allowing Wheatley to speak enough for the both of them.

And he was.

Non-stop.

* * *

><p>In the three days that it took for Chell and Fat Black Mesa Scientist to move out of teetering-on-the-brink-of-death status and into alive-but-inconvenienced-by-injuries status, it seemed like Wheatley had stopped talking only when Chell was napping. GLaDOS had flatly told him to shut up more times than she could count and resorted to returning to her main body so that she could sit in silence while she blocked off the audio feed from the infirmary. All the air stuck in Chell's chest cavity had drained without incident and, with the magic of Aperture Science Intramuscular Pain Inhibitors (one of Aperture's special blends of local anesthetics) and Aperture Science Artificial Skin Replacement Mesh (artificial skin grafts developed for use on injured test subjects), Chell was sitting up and even walking, albeit very slowly, to and from the restroom. GLaDOS wasn't quite sure what color the skin graft was going to be once it healed—the datasheet for the mesh said that it was capable of adaptive pigmentation, but it was actually turning a faint sort of rainbow color. If that kept up, Chell would have a rather interesting splotch of rainbow-colored skin on her back that might be a hilariously awkward thing for any of Chell's potential lovers (though GLaDOS wasn't sure if she even had any) to find.<p>

Fat Black Mesa Scientist (or FBMS for convenience) was doing well enough, as far as _living_ went. His burns were deeper than Chell's and, under normal trauma center conditions, would have likely have required full-thickness skin grafts that went down into all layers of his skin. But, seeing as this was not a normal trauma center by any means and because GLaDOS had little pity for the man (in fact, none at all), she simply cut the burned tissue away and grafted the thin Artificial Skin Replacement Mesh over his wounds and just called it a day. She _did_ put him on the same local anesthetic she used for Chell and was also pumping him full of pain-killing analgesics, but this was just to keep him from moaning and crying in pain and _not_ because she particularly cared if he was hurting. But he _was_ keeping the moaning and groaning to a minimum, so it was worth it.

The man was high as a hang glider.

Chell had initially been slightly disturbed by her treatment of FBMS at first, but GLaDOS had managed to talk her down into a sort of strained disinterest ("They did try to kill you, after all, and they almost succeeded. Well, _I_ tried to kill you before, but they never even offered you cake. How rude is that?"). And though Chell seemed to make a habit out of befriending things that tried to kill her, she didn't seem to like FBMS all that much.

"_Those scientists were really smug. Wanted to punch them,_" was what Chell wrote on her notepad.

By the fourth day, Chell was beginning to show signs of boredom with the infirmary and had wheeled her IV pole into the Central AI Chamber to sit with GLaDOS and draw pictures with Wheatley. The Artificial Skin Replacement Mesh was working wonders for her back and it made GLaDOS wonder why Aperture hadn't simply marketed their medical technology to the world if they were constantly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Granted, in addition to the normal and medically-helpful technologies they had (like the Artificial Skin Replacement Mesh) they had more hazardous and experimental versions of the those technologies (like Artificial Skin Replacement Mesh that would purportedly develop into a Kevlar-like material to replace fragile human skin with side effects including but not limited to, of course, tumors). Besides, that would make _too_ much sense for Aperture: if the Enrichment Center's current state of being absolutely controlled by GLaDOS was any indication, Aperture did not put much stock in tact and sense and often labored to do the exact opposite.

The moron and Chell had taken to playing charades when they got bored of drawing—Wheatley seemed to have strained what capacity he had for imagination after drawing a veritable masterpiece of hardly recognizable birds nesting in what was apparently a test chamber. He also kept drawing GLaDOS with a crooked little crown atop her headpiece, which earned him a smack to the back of the head whenever she caught him doing it. He wasn't much better at charades, though, and could neither guess Chell's pantomimes nor mime anything coherently, not that it was for lack of trying because _trying_ was certainly all he could do. But GLaDOS didn't want to discourage him—his antics were clearly amusing Chell, which would hopefully relax her brain enough to let her vocal cords start working again. She considered sending Blue and Orange up so they could play and increase the idiot factor twofold, but ultimately decided against it.

What was she doing, running some kind of idiot daycare center?

While Wheatley was flailing around apparently trying to act out a hedgehog, GLaDOS found something _very_ interesting in an old break room—something she hadn't noticed during Wheatley's or Blue's or Orange's adventures outside the maintenance areas.

A guitar.

Two, actually, if the number of cases present were any indication. She vaguely remembered some of the Aperture employees planning to do some sort of sing-along with the little girls on Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, so perhaps these abandoned guitars were remnants of that wonderful day.

And that was how Blue and Orange ended up playing charades in the Central AI Chamber.

GLaDOS had sent them to retrieve the guitars and, of course, they got sucked into the game of charades once they delivered their charges. It was like some sort of idiot gravitational field, really—no matter how hard GLaDOS urged them to simply return to the Cooperative Testing Hub, they stubbornly lingered to play. GLaDOS was loath, however, to explode them in such close vicinity to Chell. She really should have known better and not given the Cooperative Testing Initiative robots the chance to get embroiled in the stupidity, but she didn't want Wheatley getting himself lost or dropping the guitars off a catwalk on accident and it wasn't as though Blue and Orange were testing anyway. It was a small consolation, though, that the guitars were in surprisingly good condition for just sitting there for years, even if they were probably horribly out of tune. They would suit her purposes, anyway.

The game going on near her core body no longer looked like anything remotely resembling charades. There was a lot of flailing and a lot of chirruping from Blue and Orange, whom GLaDOS suspected didn't even know what they were doing except that they had fun doing it. Honestly, it really was like babysitting children. Chell looked beside herself with (painful) silent laughter and probably would have been rolling around the chamber if it hadn't been for her back injuries. There still wasn't any sound coming out of her mouth, however, and it was beginning to make GLaDOS worry that she'd have to do something _drastic_. Like sing another song for her or something equally inane.

Well, she might not have another song for Chell, but maybe she could do that guitar serenade with FBMS on harmony.

* * *

><p>Oh, FBMS would be in for a surprise once the anesthetic and analgesic wore off. Which would be in about ten minutes.<p>

Partly because she would be standing in front of him holding a guitar in her hands, but mostly because he would find himself tied to a flipped-up floor panel in the Central AI Chamber.

She'd wheeled him out of the infirmary herself in the early hours of the morning after sending Wheatley away to do a meaningless task like cleaning the leaves out of one of the ruined test chambers (and, him being who he was, he didn't question why it needed to be done at six in the morning). It would ruin the surprise if Chell saw her moving FBMS, and GLaDOS didn't want to feel that tiny pang of guilt that she was doing something a little bit wrong. Not that she particularly thought that horribly maiming the scientist was wrong, but she didn't like the almost hesitant expression that appeared on Chell's face whenever killing the scientist came up. But that would pass with time—she was not about to have mercy on a _Black Mesa_ scientist of all people after he had the audacity to threaten her test subject with death.

"Hnnnggghh…" came a faint moan of pain from FBMS.

For now, GLaDOS was standing behind the flipped-up floor panel and out of sight and would stay that way until Chell showed up in the chamber. Which wouldn't be too long, as it seemed that Wheatley had woken her with his chatter about ten minutes ago and was currently helping her make her way there. GLaDOS held the guitar up, her mechanical fingers forming the one chord she had bothered to learn and giving the strings a gentle strum, the faint chord drifting up into her aural sensors. Not bad for a twenty-year-or-older guitar (after tuning, of course). She almost felt sorry for the Aperture scientists that she neurotoxined to death—they didn't live long enough to see their creation learn how to make music in order to taunt a rival scientist and/or entertain a test subject.

"Wh-where am I? Oh god, what the fuck…it hurts…"

GLaDOS turned her gaze to the door as it opened and let Wheatley and Chell through. They both looked quite surprised—Chell's face plainly said, "_What's going on here?"_ while Wheatley _actually_ said, "Oh! What's going on here?"

With a devious smile, she strummed the chord louder this time, its melodious sound echoing off the chamber panels. "I brought the Black Mesa scientist here for _questioning_," said GLaDOS as a Vital Apparatus Vent was lowered in from the ceiling and dropped a Weighted Storage Cube onto the floor with a particularly heavy _thunk_.

"Huh? Who—who's there?"

The panel that FBMS was bound to suddenly wheeled around so that he, in all his Black Mesa girth, was facing the two androids and single human. "W-w-what's going on h-here?" he said nervously, his round face contorted in pain. "Who are you…people?"

"Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center," said GLaDOS with a small smile as she gave the guitar a light strum. FBMS looked momentarily triumphant before looking visibly distressed by the fact that he was tied down to a panel before an android holding a guitar.

"Aperture…I did it. I found it! B-but wh-what's going on h-here? I th-thought I saw Rob shoot you…"

Instead of directing his question at GLaDOS, who had _very_ clearly spoken, moved her mouth, and looked very obviously human, he looked to Chell, who hadn't so much as opened her mouth at him. Irritation spread through her circuits at the fact that he _completely ignored her_ and also the fact that he was speaking so casually to the woman he'd been so ready to kill.

"A better question would be who you are," said GLaDOS, stepping in front of Chell and carefully making sure to suppress the sound of her anger. "Because I want to start a file for you. Just so I can put a check in the box marked 'deceased.'"

"N-n-no, wait, let's not b-be hasty h-here," he sputtered, straining slightly at the cords that bound him. "I'll tell you what you want, j-just don't k-k-kill me!"

Figures. Coward.

"Then let's start with what I asked in the first place. Who are you and what does Black Mesa want here?"

"G-Gilbert Lasseter. I—I'm a r-research associate with Black Mesa," he said, panting slightly as sweat began beading on his brow. GLaDOS glanced back and found that Chell and Wheatley were now standing close behind her, Chell glaring at this Gilbert fellow in disdain while Wheatley looked bewildered. "Th-they sent me—to find Aperture's f-facility."

"_Why?_" GLaDOS hissed, swinging the guitar toward him and jabbing him in the chest with the wide end. He let out an agonized groan, his eyes clenching shut in pain.

"They—they found the _Borealis_," Gilbert moaned, his head drooping forward. "All the tech in it was busted…they wanted—to see if anything was here…We need it…they said to kill to g-get it..."

"_Why? _What did they see on my ship?" said GLaDOS, putting the guitar down and picking up the Weighted Storage Cube. Hefting it slightly to feel the weight of the blocks of lead, she smiled at him and pressed it against his chest.

"Aaaaarrghhh! I don't know! That's all they told me! I swear! Please, stop!" he screamed when GLaDOS didn't remove the cube from his chest. When she finally let up, he gave a sob, his breathing growing ever more ragged. "Who a-are you?"

GLaDOS let him sit there panting for a few moments before bothering to reply—she wanted him to be able to comprehend what she was about to say. "My name is GLaDOS. Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. And the _Borealis _is _my _ship, this is _my_ facility, and you tried to kill _my _test subject."

It seemed that the mere mention of science-ish words suddenly focused the attention of FBMS Gilbert. "You—_you're_ GLaDOS? The name on the blueprints?" he said, his mouth hanging open. "We—we had no idea—_incredible_. Aperture really built that supercomputer…Oh, I want to see how you work...They'd love to take you apart..."

The irritation that had been slowly dissipating from her suddenly came back as a near-blinding rage. Really, did Aperture or Black Mesa have _any_ scientists with _any _shred of tact whatsoever? Here she was, standing in front of him with a decidedly un-computer-like penchant for sadistic torture while he was bound and helpless, and all he wanted to do was _take her apart? Without even _asking_ first? _She hefted the Weighted Storage Cube again and, just as comprehension began dawning on old Gilbert's face, she flung the cube right at his chest.

There was an audible _THUD_ as the cube connected with his chest and fell to the floor, the sound of the _THUNK_ getting drowned out by the terrible scream that rent the air. She picked up the cube and hefted it in preparation for another throw, but she felt a hand pulling on her arm and turned, raising her fist to punch the hell out of the person who dared to try stopping here—but she immediately froze when she found Chell staring up at her. It was all clear in her eyes: she wanted GLaDOS to stop, even though GLaDOS hadn't even gotten _started_ yet.

"They're all _monsters_," GLaDOS snarled, wrenching her arm out of Chell's grip. "They're the same as Aperture's morons!"

"L-look," Gilbert wheezed when he finally stopped groaning in pain. It seemed that being pushed toward death was drawing the smug right out of him, because he had a sort of weary half-smirk on his disgusting, sweaty face. "There's—no use—acting like it w-won't happen. They'll find you—and tear y-you apart—and make a b-better one. Even i-if you kill me. More so—if you k-kill me."

GLaDOS looked back to Chell, whose look of pity was now replaced by a look of utter disgust. Chell gave GLaDOS a brief look, their eyes meeting for but a second before she slowly turned her back on Gilbert.

Well, that was enough for GLaDOS.

"I'm making a note here in your file," said GLaDOS cheerfully, smiling at FBMS, "and I'm checking off that box labeled 'deceased.' Because you will be in a few minutes. Goodbye."

His screams filled the air as GLaDOS ignored his begging and pleading and pummeled him mercilessly with the Weighted Storage Cube. Blood splattered onto GLaDOS's face as it bubbled up out of his throat mid-scream, but she was undeterred and even felt slightly invigorated by it. And she kept pummeling for a few moments after he finally stopped screaming and went limp, until finally she hurled the bloodied cube down onto the floor. The silence as she examined the disfigured body of FBMS (she didn't even want to dignify him by referring to him by name anymore) was overbearing and almost palpable, and though her conscience vaguely told her that this was not such a good thing that she'd done, she pushed the feeling away with pleasure: screw her conscience. At least this time.

She took a moment to relish the sight of him before disengaging the floor panel, dead scientist and all, and letting it fall down underneath the floor into a chute leading to the incinerator before another panel flipped up to replace it.

Once it was in place, it was as though nothing had ever happened. The blood on GLaDOS's face and the Weighted Storage Cube were the only remnants of what she had just done. And she wasn't ashamed. Not in the least.

GLaDOS slowly turned to her two companions and found them sitting on the floor, Chell's body quivering as tears streamed from her eyes while Wheatley sat in silence, unsure what to do with himself other than to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. GLaDOS wordlessly walked over to them and sank down onto the floor beside Chell while she silently wept.

She sniffed once, glancing from Wheatley on one side and GLaDOS on the other before pulling them close, resting her forehead on GLaDOS's shoulder while clutching Wheatley's hand and simply weeping.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Okay, so I fail at gauging how long these chapters are going to be. BUT. The next one will be last. VERY SURE. Even if it's double the length of this, it will be the end._

_The idea of GLaDOS running a daycare was so funny that I borrowed Faux Promises' idea a bit. XD Also, GLaDOS sure is possessive. Or at least, that's how I imagine her to be. I've also gone insane. GLaDOS + guitar.  
><em>

_So, obviously I am not a doctor or even an individual trained in medicine, but I did spend all week reading about collapsed lungs, gunshot wounds, hypovolemic shock, burns, and skin grafting. Hopefully it was believable enough for you guys. Also, rainbow skin. I'd love to have rainbow skin. But I wouldn't be surprised if Aperture Rainbow Skin Mesh gave you tumors. Or superpowers. Or something._


	12. Worth

**Resolution**

_(A/N: I'm a liar. This isn't the last chapter. It got too long and I didn't want you guys waiting too long for it. Don't listen to me if I try to tell you how many chapters are left. I'm just…gonna write till it's done.) _

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Twelve: Worth<strong>

Restoring Chell's voice was proving to be more difficult than GLaDOS initially expected.

Well—maybe not _difficult_ in the sense that she was actively doing something to restore it, but difficult in that it still hadn't returned after about a week and a half of recovery following their incident with the Black Mesa scientists. Then again, the threat of more Black Mesa goons showing up was still looming over their heads; maybe Chell couldn't relax amid all the veritable frenzy of maintenance GLaDOS was doing on the Enrichment Center's defense mechanisms. Though for reasons that she couldn't quite comprehend, GLaDOS felt part of her friend's anxiety was related to the death of Fat Black Mesa Scientist: while Chell had already brutally murdered GLaDOS once and tried to do it two more times, GLaDOS was reasonably sure that Chell had never killed a human being before. Not that Chell had killed FBMS, of course, but she'd given up on trying to _stop_ GLaDOS from killing him, and she supposed that Chell likely thought it to be as good as killing him. Maybe it was that empathy thing affecting her—it had been another human being, after all, and weren't a lot of non-sociopathic humans full of empathy?

Fortunately, as each day passed, Chell seemed to push it further and further from her mind with a little encouragement from GLaDOS ("_You_ didn't murder him—I did."). Her eyes still held a sort of far-off sadness in them—the sorrow had been there after she'd discovered that her voice was nonfunctional again, but it was likely exacerbated by the death of FBMS. GLaDOS knew she _probably_ shouldn't worry about it too much, but it left her with only Wheatley to talk to and he was a _very_ poor conversationalist (and even poorer now because he was so worried about Chell that he had a hard time talking about anything else). She tried talking to the lost turret she'd rescued from the empty room, but despite the fact that it had talked to the moron before, it merely repeated the phrases "you're lost," "I don't have a mouth", and "that's all I can say." It was irritating enough that GLaDOS considered baking a cake just so she could eat it in front of the turret.

What had Chell _done_ to her? GLaDOS had never felt such a need to talk to anyone before, and here she was trying to talk to turrets.

What _did_ come out of it all this madness was that GLaDOS had _finally_—reluctantly, as though it might have killed her—picked up a pen and drew a picture. If she couldn't have any sort of conversation with them, then she might as well join the duo in their artistic endeavors.

"Wow, GLaDOS," said Wheatley, glancing at her drawing in awe as Chell did the same, "I didn't know you were so bloody good at drawing."

GLaDOS looked down her drawing of a deer and let out a little sigh. Her body's ability to render near-perfect illustrations sort of defeated the purpose of _art_, didn't it? The drawing honestly looked like it could have come out of a printer despite trying to apply a sort of imaging filter and make it look like a sketch. Maybe it was because she was drawing something from memory (in this case, a fifteen-megapixel photo of a deer). Perhaps her drawings would look more…_artistic_ if she drew something not stored in her hard disks.

Well.

Almost.

While it was great that her spatial and image processing powers were beyond powerful, even something she hadn't encountered before (in this case, a raccoon in a three-piece suit doing a somersault over Chell's head) looked as though it might have been rendered in 3D with a sketch filter put on it before getting printed out by a relatively mediocre printer. GLaDOS looked to Chell's doodles of flowers and Wheatley's squashy turrets and found herself becoming inexplicably irritated with herself. She might have thought her artistic conundrum might stem from the deeper and more philosophical question of whether artificial personality constructs were capable of making art, but it seemed Wheatley wasn't having the same issue that she was. Was his inability to generate near-perfect drawings because he had more solid roots as a human, or was his simpler core design more suited to art than GLaDOS's was?

She _hated_ the idea that he might be better than her in something. Even if the something was silly like the ability to draw lopsided turrets. Sure, she could draw lopsided turrets herself, but each pen stroke would have purpose and would be deliberate—very much unlike the way he haphazardly (and very happily) pulled his pencil across the paper with a sort of spontaneity that GLaDOS wasn't sure she was capable of.

_Tap tap._

GLaDOS looked up from her drawing when Chell tapped her hand with a pen and found her holding up her notepad.

"_something wrong?_" she'd written.

"No," said GLaDOS flatly. Chell rolled her eyes and took a moment to scribble something on the notepad before holding it up again.

"_liar. it's all over your face."_

She had to resist the urge to put a hand to her face as she glared at Chell. The facial mechanisms on her androids were sophisticated, sure, but they didn't quite have the nuance of organic tissue: when she quickly reviewed the configuration of her facial panels, GLaDOS found that she hadn't been doing much more than examining her drawing in mild boredom. How in the world could Chell read her so well when there had hardly been anything to read on her face in the first place?

"It's such a tragedy: it looks like you're mute and now you're going _blind_," said GLaDOS, smirking in an attempt to mask her irritation (and slight surprise) while Chell snorted and gave a silent laugh.

"Wait, Chell is going blind? But she was just fine a moment ago—doesn't need glasses or anything!" Wheatley said in horror, looking up from his drawing. When nothing but silence and an arched eyebrow from Chell answered him, he let out a small, embarrassed laugh. "Oh, right. That's sarcasm! I get it. Sarcasm. So you're not going blind after all! Which is a relief, frankly. N-not that I thought you were, of course!"

He laughed nervously as Chell rolled her eyes again and tapped him once on his knuckles before returning to her sketch. GLaDOS, however, had no desire to continue drawing; it was a pointless exercise for her, and it'd only irritate her more to watch the moron make his misshapen drawings.

It wasn't jealousy or anything.

Imagine. GLaDOS, jealous of that moron.

…

For god's sake.

"As much as I'd _love_ to waste more of my time here, I'm going to do some tests," said GLaDOS, getting to her feet and rattling the cables coming out of her head.

"More tests with Blue and Orange?" asked Wheatley, scratching his chin with the eraser of his pencil.

Him and that blasted pencil…

"You know, _you and I_ are going to test," GLaDOS said slowly, a devious smile spreading across her face. "We haven't done that yet, have we?"

The idiot looked deliciously horrified by the idea. "Y-y-you mean do a test? With you? As in…with the portal gun?" he sputtered, dropping his pencil as GLaDOS pulled him to his feet by his neck.

"_Yes_, you. Does it look like Chell is in any condition to do any tests? Put on your Long Fall Boots and meet me in the Cooperative Testing Hub, or I'll blow you up and have you reassembled there," GLaDOS said, pushing him toward the door. He stumbled, nearly falling flat on his backside as he twisted around to give Chell a terrified look—as though begging Chell for help might actually get GLaDOS to spare him from testing (it wouldn't). When she could only give him a helpless and apologetic shrug, he let out a nervous laugh and began backing away toward the door.

"Right. Testing. I—ah—I'll be right down. You know, even though I'm not very good. At testing. Absolutely awful at it, really, you don't want me as your testing partner. I just—"

"Just _go_," GLaDOS snapped.

When he let out another nervous laugh and finally trotted out of the room, GLaDOS sat down beside the core transfer receptacle and plugged the transfer cable in. "I'm going to modify the euphoria parameters again," she said when Chell sat down beside her and gave her a questioning look.

They sat in silence while GLaDOS reviewed the previous versions of the euphoria modifications she'd made. Trying to modify it now might be just as pointless as her trying to make art, but she refused to simply accept the humiliation of making that disgusting sound whenever she completed a test chamber. "What's so funny?" said GLaDOS, frowning when she realized that Chell was silently laughing beside her as the modified code began compiling. Chell waved her comment away and shrugged again, all the while laughing away like the lunatic she was. "I can give you a voice, you know. As a gift because I'm so generous," GLaDOS said, a smirk spreading across her face. "I just need to put a few chips in your head and give you a voice modulator and that muteness will clear _right_ up. I can even give you a voice doesn't sound as dumb as yours does."

Under normal circumstances, GLaDOS would have expected a sarcastic retort, but Chell was very mute at the moment and, of course, had no voice for a retort.

So Chell shoved her instead.

This was so unexpected that GLaDOS had to throw her arm out to keep herself from toppling sideways onto the floor. "The Enrichment Center would like to remind you that physical violence against the central AI unit is against protocol," GLaDOS said huffily, glaring at her smirking companion.

And what did that smirking madwoman do?

_Shove her again._

"Stop that!" GLaDOS snapped irately as she straightened up. Frankly, she should've seen it coming, considering who it was she was talking to. When Chell could only snicker in silence, GLaDOS sullenly turned away. "I _could_ push you back, you know. Except you're injured and _I'm_ not a monster, so I won't."

Surprise briefly flashed across Chell's face and, if GLaDOS wasn't mistaken, she looked slightly ashamed of herself. GLaDOS would have felt gleeful at that little triumph if it hadn't been for the slightly distressing fact that she now found herself pulled into a hug. "I'm starting to wonder," GLaDOS said, unable to escape her grasp since she was still waiting for the euphoria suppression code to finish compiling, "if maybe the carbon fiber reinforcements are poisoning your brain." When Chell did not let go and in fact held on tighter in lieu of a vocal retort, GLaDOS frowned and let out a small sigh. "Seriously, let go. I don't want any part in your disgusting human interactions."

She actually had the gall to start _laughing_. Voiceless, raspy laughing, but laughing nonetheless.

Also, she didn't let go.

"You're taking advantage of the fact that your little—oh, sorry, slip of the tongue—_large_ human body is hurt."

But Chell had that _face_. The determined, testing face that had been the bane of GLaDOS's existence after this entire business of waking Chell from stasis the first time, getting killed, getting put into a potato, nearly getting blown up by a moron, getting removed from said potato, and making friends. What was she trying to get with that face? Did she want GLaDOS to _return_ the hug?

Judging by her expression?

Yes.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Chell's face was unfazed, unwavering, and she stubbornly shook her head.

"Oh, for god's sake. Are you so starved for human contact that you're resorting to _me?_" GLaDOS said derisively, rolling her eyes and letting out a dramatic sigh. Chell, unfortunately, was still undeterred by the bite in her words and _still_ looked at her expectantly, as though to say "It's not going to kill you." This lunatic was pushing GLaDOS so far out of her comfort zone that she might as well be out orbiting said comfort zone in space, but she supposed the longer she spent trying to avoid hugging her, the longer she'd spend trapped in her grip (which was surprisingly strong for someone whose back was recovering from being discouraged by a laser).

The euphoria modification would be finished compiling in three seconds.

Two.

One.

GLaDOS quickly wrapped her arms around Chell and squeezed once—and when Chell's grip loosened in surprise, she took that opportunity to unplug the transfer cable and slip out of her arms in one fluid motion. "I hope you're happy, because that means one of us is," said GLaDOS, frowning as Chell got to her feet with a smirk. She gave GLaDOS a light pat on the shoulder to indicate that yes, she was quite happy.

As GLaDOS walked to the Cooperative Testing Hub with Chell, who was carrying Wheatley's portal gun, she struggled to suppress the distressing desire to talk to her currently mute friend in spite of the fact that she was, in fact, currently mute. She'd spent long enough talking to a person that didn't have the decency (or ability) to respond to all the things she'd been saying for her benefit (because _really_, insults build character), and she'd gotten used to having a person that _did_ have the decency (and ability) to respond. Then again, maybe her cravings for conversation had gradually developed and she'd never actually noticed it until Chell could no longer speak.

She'd be…_enhancing_ the truth if she said that she didn't miss having someone who could talk _with_ her, rather than the way the abominable Aperture scientists had talked down _at _her or the way that the moron talked up to her as a superior. No, GLaDOS and Chell—they were equals, and just admitting _that_ was probably a milestone development as far as GLaDOS was concerned. Honestly, she ought to be given a medal of some sort. She could award herself some Science Points, of course: a cool million or so would probably be appropriate.

Wheatley was already waiting in the Hub when they arrived and seemed to be playing charades with Blue and Orange (not that his flailing made it particularly obvious). The perplexed looks on Blue and Orange made GLaDOS briefly consider modifying them to be capable of speech, just so they could tell Wheatley verbally that he was terrible at the game. "Ah, Chell! And GLaDOS! With the portal gun," added Wheatley, laughing nervously and eyeing the portal device in Chell's hands. "So, ah, just thought I'd take a moment remind you that I'm not particularly good at testing—"

"I _know _you're not, moron," GLaDOS said in exasperation. "Just take the portal device. We'll do simple ones, for your sake and mine."

It was painfully obvious that he hadn't held a handheld portal device ever since that day he and Chell ran the Calibration Course (and decided to play soccer with an Edgeless Safety Cube)—it took him a moment to find the triggers and when he did, he accidentally shot a portal at Orange's backside, prompting her to trill indignantly at him. When Chell took pity on him and helped him hold it properly (which he did with an almost pathetically triumphant grin), GLaDOS rolled her eyes and began walking off toward the entrance of one of the simpler testing tracks.

"You can come to the chamber if you want," GLaDOS said, glancing at Chell as she stepped into an elevator. "I removed all the exciting, deadly testing elements so you won't be killed by any exciting, deadly testing elements."

The testing itch (or general boredom) must have been getting to Chell, because a delighted grin spread across her face as she nudged Wheatley over to the opposite elevator and gleefully squeezed in with him. He seemed to be completely taken by surprise by this and accidentally shot a portal at the elevator door and nearly dropped the device when he realized just how close Chell would need to be in order for them to fit into the elevator.

"A-ah, so you're coming too? To watch us test?" GLaDOS heard him say before their elevator doors slid shut and the elevators sped down to the first test chamber of the track.

Moron.

"All right, then! Just watch—Wheatley can do this! N-not a problem!" said Wheatley when he stumbled out of the elevator. He seemed to be doing his best to look determined and confident, as if he actually knew what he was doing. Just what happened in that elevator during the 4.1359-second trip down to the chamber?

As promised, the chamber was actually quite easy: GLaDOS effortlessly saw the solution after a cursory glance around the room while Wheatley was still preoccupied with beating his chest about how he would definitely be able to help solve a test. "All right then, moron," said GLaDOS, glancing at him and smirking, "you tell me how to solve it. I'll put my portals wherever you say."

He seemed to deflate almost immediately, but he glanced once at Chell and tried to pull himself together. "Okay, just watch. I can do this. Really. Really, I can. Just…need…to—ah! We need to get that cube!" he exclaimed, looking up at a Weighted Storage Cube sitting on a high ledge. "Just—how the bloody hell do we get up there?"

It took every ounce of self-control that GLaDOS had to keep from simply solving the test herself—a problem that Chell also seemed to be having, if the frustrated grimace on her face was anything to go by (which she quickly changed into an encouraging smile whenever Wheatley looked back at her). In fact, GLaDOS was ready to hit him and just get the cube herself when he _finally_ figured out that he needed to place a portal onto the floor of the chamber's pit and a portal on the high panel opposite the ledge in order to fling himself across. When he did so (with an awkward flail once he realized he was falling quite a ways, GLaDOS smiled in vindictive satisfaction as his momentum carried him face-first into the far wall on the ledge.

"Okay, I've got the cube!" he said triumphantly, holding the cube aloft with the portal device once he recovered from getting his face smashed into the wall. "Er…now what? I'm fairly sure we need to put this cube…on that button. Cube, button. Great! But how do we get up to the button?"

The button in question was one sitting atop another ledge and had blue lights leading to the exit door. It was, needless to say, unreachable by jumping. "What if I…threw the cube there? No, what…can't throw that far. Bit too heavy for that," Wheatley added just as GLaDOS was about to snap at him to not waste time by trying it. "Oh! Er—GLaDOS? What happens when you step on that button there?"

_Finally_.

With great relief, GLaDOS stepped on the button he was pointing at—it was a button on ground level, which flipped a panel high on the wall around so that it revealed a white portal-conducting surface. "Er…what did it do?" Wheatley called, looking slightly perplexed.

"It flipped a panel around up there. It's possible to shoot a portal onto it," said GLaDOS, pointing up at the wall. It was out of his view, so he wouldn't be able to put a portal onto it himself, but it was what they needed to get the cube over to the button by the exit.

"Right. Rrrrriight. Seems we're in a _bit_ of pickle, aren't we? Bit of a pickle," she heard him muttering to himself. It was almost painful to see him thinking so hard—GLaDOS knew it wasn't his fault that he was no good at solving puzzles, but the sight of him musing so intensely about such a simple solution was difficult to watch without acting upon her desire to violently crush something.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were stumped," GLaDOS said, resting her portal device on her shoulder and smirking up at him.

"Nonono! I can do this! I can still figure it out!" he said indignantly. "Errrrm…_probably_ not an option to give the cube wings at this point, is it…?"

GLaDOS didn't want to dignify his question with any answer apart from giving him the most venomous glare that she could manage, but he proved to have enough sense in his idiotic little brain to cringe and apologize profusely while Chell slapped a palm to her forehead. "Errm…uh…I've got it!" he said finally, once he managed to pull himself together. "GLaDOS, could you—um—put your portal down in this pit, and one on that panel from the button?"

"So you can actually solve tests," said GLaDOS airily as she walked over to put a light blue portal down in the pit. "I guess you did well. For you."

He managed to pick up on the thinly veiled compliment and sputtered a nervous "thank you!" while she returned to her place atop the button and shot a purple portal onto the flipped panel above. When she nodded to him, he stepped off the ledge and into her light blue portal, flailing madly as he was flung across the room to the exit ledge. He was actually doing pretty well until he nearly dropped the cube off the ledge when he tried to disengage it from the portal device's zero-point energy field manipulator, but thankfully he managed to catch it in time and triumphantly placed it on the button.

Chell pat him on the shoulder and gave him a hug when she climbed up the stairs that the button had activated. "Oh—uh—thank you!" he said, grinning as they walked over to stand in front of the camera by the exit.

Well, here it was again. The moment where GLaDOS would see if her euphoria modifications worked or not. It was a small consolation to know that even if the modifications failed (_again_), Wheatley was incapable of feeling the testing euphoria in that body and so would not be joining her in The Moan That Transcends All Code.

She steeled herself for the inevitable failure and stepped in front of the camera.

A faint tingle registered in her sensors. So far so good, but this had happened before and resulted in the cybernetic equivalent of an acid trip.

Still no disgusting moan, but a pleasant lightheadedness began to overtake her head. It was beginning to interfere with her thought processes, but it was definitely better than that horrid moan.

When five million nanoseconds had passed without her losing all control over her body, GLaDOS let out a laugh of triumph. "It worked," she said. "It worked!"

"Brilliant! Er—what worked?" asked Wheatley, giving her a perplexed glance.

"The solution euphoria suppression modifications. Let's see if it'll last—let's do another test."

GLaDOS got the feeling that something was slightly off when the short elevator ride down to the next test chamber seemed entirely more exciting than she recalled it ever being. Maybe it was simply a symptom of the excitement of finally making a successful modification to the euphoria effects. However, a little nagging feeling in the back of her head told her that stumbling upon exiting the elevator was not quite normal (though fortunately, Chell and Wheatley didn't notice), but, oddly, she was feeling entirely too cheerful about her success to care one way or another.

The next chamber was almost as simple as the previous one, though it also included a lone Aerial Faith Plate. GLaDOS peered around the chamber in order to see the solution, but an odd fog was beginning to descend in her mind that was making it a little difficult to think. She was distracted, however, when Wheatley wandered a bit too close to the Faith Plate and was subsequently flung in a high arc across the room and onto a tilted portal surface. It was then that GLaDOS realized the solution: place portals on the tilted surfaces in order to reach a switch that would deposit an Edgeless Safety Cube from a vent. Without bothering to wait for Wheatley to get off the tilted surface, GLaDOS shot a portal on the tilted panel he was standing on and one on the other tilted surface, causing him to fall through with a strangled yelp of alarm while she walked over toward the Faith Plate. Firmer distress signals began going off in the back of her mind when it became a chore to walk in a straight line, but it could wait until after they finished this chamber—she pushed the little warning signals as far out of her mind as possible and stepped onto the Aerial Faith Plate without hesitation.

Dear god, why did flying through the air feel so _exciting?_

It felt so good that she felt the need to make some sort of announcement indicating this.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

When she found herself deposited neatly on the ledge with the switch, she stopped making her exciting announcement and pressed said switch.

Or would have, if she hadn't been distracted by the slightly odd sound coming from the area near the chamber entrance.

"Ha ha ha ha…"

That sound…

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha…!"

That voice.

"Hahahahahahaha!"

GLaDOS could see Chell doubled over in laughter while Wheatley looked at her with his jaw hanging slightly open, and this piqued GLaDOS's interest because she couldn't quite see what was so funny and was curious as to why Chell was laughing so hard, but more importantly—

_Chell was making sound again_.

"You're—you're speaking! Well, laughing actually, but making sounds again! Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" Wheatley exclaimed, bounding over to her with a grin on his face as her laughs grew louder and louder.

"What—whasso funny?" GLaDOS demanded, but she quickly took a step back in shock and swayed on her feet. "Why can't I—why am I talking…like _thissss_…?"

"Oh god," Chell gasped, her voice raspy but making sound nonetheless, "are you—_drunk_, GLaDOS?"

"It's—it's imp—impossssi—illogical for me to be _drunk_," GLaDOS managed to say, and she was horrified by her sudden speech impediment. "I'm not—can't get drunk. I'm not hoo—_hu_man."

Chell laughed even harder and sank down onto the floor, curling up as her body shook with each laugh. "I—I never thought I'd live—to see this," she gasped, wiping tears from her eyes. "Oh, god…hahahahahaha!"

"Whyyyyy do I even—_have_ this func—function?" GLaDOS said irately as she jumped off the ledge. She mentally thanked the Long Fall Boots for being there on her feet—in her current state, she might have broken both her legs if she tried that little stunt without them. If there had been any Aperture scientists left after she killed them all with neurotoxin, she would have killed them all over again for this—whatever the hell _this_ was. Honestly, nobody but an Aperture scientist would think it'd be a good idea to give their facility's main AI unit the capability of simulating drunkenness. She'd definitely have to look in the version changelogs to see if they included any particular reasoning other than the "why not?" that was Aperture's usual research and development mantra, and this was definitely the last time she played with unhelpfully-named variables without consulting documentation first. Maybe the scientists thought that once Caroline was uploaded, she might want to have a few digital drinks in order to unwind after a hard day's testing, as though it would be enough to relax from the horrible fate of being poured into a computer like GLaDOS in the first place?

_Wonderful_.

So at the moment, her only options when testing was to either moan like dirty human or totter around and slur like she'd just done a kegstand.

She almost preferred the dirty moan. Actually, she _did_ prefer it. A few seconds of humiliation was far superior to this currently ongoing (with no end in sight) condition of not being able to walk or think properly. In which case—her success was actually a failure. A horrible failure.

"Let's—let'sss go back," GLaDOS managed to say, teetering over to where Chell was lying on the floor and laughing her guts out.

"You—you can't even—_walk_," Chell squeaked, her face contorted in a mixture of helpless laughter and horrible pain. GLaDOS glanced at Wheatley, almost daring him to burst into laughter, and she was pleased to see him shrink away a bit and give her a nervous half-smile.

If anything came of this humiliation, it was that it got Chell speaking again.

So it was worth it. A little bit.

"Come on, let's—let's go back," Chell said breathlessly, picking herself up off the floor and running her fingers through her hair.

While GLaDOS desperately wanted to return to the Central AI Chamber, she dreaded having to take another step to get there because her balancing mechanisms were completely unreliable at the moment. To her relief (or dismay—she couldn't decide which yet), Chell noticed her silent quandary and without any sort of warning, grabbed GLaDOS's arm and pulled it over her head and across her shoulders. Since she was slightly shorter than GLaDOS's android body, Chell actually fit surprisingly well under her arm and made a very good support.

"Come on, lean—on me. Wheatley—get her—o-other side," said Chell, jerking her head toward GLaDOS's unsupported side. It seemed she was having some difficulty making the sounds come out of her throat, but the important thing was that she was actually _making _sounds again. Eloquent speech would probably return sometime soon.

GLaDOS almost tried to twist herself away from Wheatley—honestly, she didn't want him touching her for fear of him somehow bumbling his way into accidentally throwing them all into a pit—but as an inexplicably drunk computer that probably couldn't even add in binary at the moment, it was probably best to just swallow her pride for once and let them help her. If she didn't, they might just leave her there to crawl her way back to the Central AI Chamber on her own—she could see Chell pulling something like that on her. How utterly pathetic would that be, crawling back to her chamber all alone?

Pride tasted bitter and she did _not_ like swallowing it.

"GLaDOS, your—body—is heavy," Chell said as they shuffled through the Cooperative Testing Hub like some bizarre six-legged creature.

"Calling me—fat noooow?" GLaDOS managed to say through the maddening fog in her head. "Breaking—my heart—insss—insulting me after I wwwwent through aaaaall _this_—to get _your_ voice back. You mute—ungrateful—lunatic."

"I thought—this was for euphoria—problems."

"Got your voice back—dinntyou? Close enough."

"Heh. Th-thanks."

GLaDOS let the words sink in. They felt pretty good, but she wasn't sure if that was the digital inebriation speaking or if it actually _felt_ good.

"Dongetusedtoit."

"Rrriiight. Sure thing."

She wasn't even sure when they had reached the Central AI Chamber—all that she knew at the moment were the vague and almost far-off voices of her two companions and that she was somehow now lying on the floor beside the core transfer receptacle. And before she could show them which cable to use out of the ones extending from her head, her android body suspended all unnecessary processes and plunged her into the darkness of sleep mode.

* * *

><p>The first thing GLaDOS noticed upon coming back online was that she was curled on the floor of the Central AI Chamber.<p>

The second thing she noticed was that Chell was beside her, lying on her stomach with the side of her face squashed against the floor.

The third thing she noticed was Wheatley in sleep mode, lying next to Chell with his fingers curled around hers.

These were three things whose inexplicable idiocy, in the past, would have surprised her, but after what happened 7.62 hours ago (according to the diagnostic report she ran on her body)...

She did feel herself bristle in annoyance at the thought that the great chamber housing her main body was, at the moment, being used for some sort of bizarre slumber party, but the thing was that she wasn't exactly _surprised_ that it had all happened that way. She wasn't sure if there was much that would _really_ surprise her anymore.

Test subject escaping incinerator and coming to kill her? Wouldn't even bat an optic shutter.

Getting put into a potato? Been there, done that.

Getting put into a _tomato? _Not a potato, but not all that surprising either.

Black Mesa scientists bearing down on the Enrichment Center? What else was new?

And now she probably had the distinction of being the only computer ever to have passed out _drunk_. Short of Caroline's ghost suddenly emerging from her hard disks and telling her to get it on with Chell and the moron (whatever "it" may possibly be—GLaDOS didn't want to think about it), there probably wasn't much else that would make GLaDOS truly frustrated and angry because she was going to be sure to _never_ use that euphoria suppression modification ever again. After plugging in her transfer cable to prepare for resynchronization with her main body, she made doubly sure to leave a note (in big red letters) in that euphoria mod's metadata to absolutely never under no circumstances induce solution euphoria while running that modification, and she put a nice big lock on the file so that it would require some work to remove should she ever completely lose her mind and decide to try it again.

Still, regardless of all the humiliation of having to get dragged back to the chamber by her only friends, it really was worth it. It had amused Chell enough that her voice returned for the purposes of laughing her backside off, and when GLaDOS looked down at her sleeping friend, she felt a brief ripple of relief go through her at the sight of Chell's placid and almost carefree expression (so carefree, in fact, that she was freeing saliva all over the floor panel).

She allowed herself a smile (since, thankfully, nobody around her was awake to see it) and lay back down on the floor. It wouldn't hurt to stay like that for a little while longer.

Maybe she was starting to get the hang of this empathy thing after all.

* * *

><p><em>AN: So like I said up at the top, this isn't the last chapter because it got really long and it would've taken me a few days to a week to finish (and I know some of you may have been waiting for an update…maybe). Anywho, I'm not gonna make any more chapter promises because I obviously can't keep them. So. I'll just write till it's done, whether that means there's one chapter left or five. I hope this chapter was passable, though. : ( _

_Lots of people have watched _I, Robot, _right? The way that Sonny draws his dream is how I imagine GLaDOS would draw. XD _

_So…I'm not sure what exactly possessed me to write GLaDOS getting drunk off solution euphoria, but I hope it was entertaining for you guys. It seems almost as ill-conceived as that comic I did about SHODAN wanting GLaDOS back (for those curious, check my Tumblr). In any case, if you _didn't_ like it, the story's almost over so you won't have to suffer through my madness much longer. _

_BOXES WITH WINGS, EVERYBODY. IT'S THE FUTURE OF STORAGE CUBES._


	13. Resolution

**Resolution**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Thirteen: Resolution<strong>

After taking the time to step through her euphoria suppression code in order to find out which parameters triggered the simulated inebriation, GLaDOS finally narrowed the offenders down to variables labeled cryptically as "_rlx56," "_rlx57," and "relFire."

In hindsight, it was probably better to _not_ cause changes in unhelpfully-named variables without first consulting documentation.

But really, how was she supposed to know that causing _rlx56 to become a nonzero positive integer and increasing _rlx57 by fifty and getting relFire to change to "true" would trigger the prolonged euphoria effect that was not unlike _actual_ inebriation? It was as though the programmers and engineers had specifically made her source code (and the relevant documentation, which, incidentally, told her a grand total of _nothing_ about those three variables) as absolutely obfuscating as possible. Then again, it was _painfully_ obvious that they had been in a big hurry to finish their work if the huge blocks of incomprehensible commented-out code were any indication. Considering the fact that she was not the first iteration of the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, it was baffling (among other things) to see such useless and obsolete code from version 1.0 simply sitting there in comment blocks when her hardware didn't even _support_ some of the low-level instructions some of the code was using. There weren't even any comments to say _why_ the code had been left there out of anything but laziness.

Honestly, did none of the software engineers ever try to clean up the code at all?

Still, the upside of it all was that, in the absolute worst case scenario where Black Mesa somehow got control of her and the facility, she could have the satisfaction of knowing that they'd probably be utterly confounded by what the useless Genetic LIfeform and Disk Operating System documentation (for at least a little while). She had no intention of letting herself fall into Black Mesa's clutches, however; part of the maintenance frenzy on the Enrichment Center's defenses included increasing the intensity of the lasers in the Thermal Discouragement Beam arrays and repairing the arrays near the more exposed areas of the ruined test chambers. The lasers would now burn through flesh twice as quickly, and while it was particularly dangerous for anything made of flesh up on the surface of the wheat field, GLaDOS didn't intend to let Chell run around up there if there was any reason to be using the beam arrays in the first place.

Which Chell didn't seem to want to do at the moment, anyway. She was currently preoccupied with hosting her own little cooking class with the moron, Blue, Orange, and the lost turret that she and Wheatley seemed to have grown inexplicably attached to down in the Enrichment Center cafeteria's kitchen. GLaDOS had a nagging feeling that it was a little cruel to let Blue and Orange participate in baking a cake (and having the turret watch) if they didn't even have mouths to eat it with (and in the case of the turret, arms to help with), but they seemed happy enough to be a part of the absolute disaster going on in the kitchen. She was loath to let the pair of testing robots join in at first, but Chell had insisted it would be a good for science to see how well they could adapt to non-testing activities—GLaDOS saw the glint in her eye and took that as a blatant challenge, so naturally, she acquiesced. She noticed that Blue and Orange were quick learners even for things unrelated to testing and would actually be pretty competent at what they were doing if they didn't spend so much time harassing each other like schoolchildren trying to cope with schoolyard crushes—and they _looked_ like schoolchildren, what with all the flour and chocolate icing smeared over their cores.

GLaDOS had declined Chell's invitation to join them—she'd told her that it was because she had to finish stress testing her new Aperture Science Hazardous Object Containment Unit (whose design was repurposed from the Intelligence Dampening Sphere Failsafe), but that was an outright lie. She'd actually finished stress testing it the week prior, and incidentally, nothing short of a point-blank explosion could break the reinforced glass and it could be sealed to be airtight while the air was vacuumed out or neurotoxin was pumped in. It would have been nice to test it on Fat Black Mesa Scientist, but then again, beating the shit out of him had been quite satisfying as well.

The real reason she didn't want to go down there and bake was because she—_GLaDOS_—was afraid.

Okay, maybe not _afraid_. Maybe "hesitant" or "reluctant" would be more appropriate.

Although there was no reason to think that she'd somehow become digitally drunk just by going down and mixing flour and eggs and sugar together, she was still reluctant to get back in her android body after what had happened after activating that version of the suppression code. It was a bit of a sore wound, and she didn't want to be reminded of it every time Chell or Wheatley looked at her with that irritating, vague amusement on their faces. Besides, she didn't want to be a part of whatever was going on down in the kitchens—it looked more like a warzone than a baking session.

But in spite of the disaster that had gone on in the making of the cake, she had to (begrudgingly) admit that the actual finished product didn't look half bad. It certainly was a step up from that first lunatic cake that said lunatic brought in—it was layered, was _not_ lopsided, and was iced relatively well considering the morons that were icing it. And to GLaDOS's general surprise, she found Chell surprisingly effective in getting the gaggle of Aperture constructs to restore the kitchen back to its mostly pristine condition prior to their little cake session (though GLaDOS did take small pleasure in seeing her so frustrated with the antics of the robots around her—it was like a little taste of what GLaDOS had to deal with _all the time_).

But, to GLaDOS's horror, she realized that the motley crew was marching the cake up to the Central AI Chamber, presumably to share with her.

"Keep that cake away from here," she said irately into the facility speakers.

"Seriously. I don't need your lunatic cake up here," she added when they continued on unfazed.

"Now might be a good time to get the Massively Cooperative Testing Initiative out of storage. For all four of you. It's_ very_ deadly. And painful," she continued when they arrived in the chamber.

"Oh, come on. What happened last night isn't even that big of a deal. Stop getting your wires in a twist and get out of that body and have some cake. You'll feel better. Promise," said Chell, sitting herself on the floor underneath GLaDOS's massive chassis and setting the cake down. GLaDOS's _mostly_ empty threats were simply bouncing off her (there really was a Massively Cooperative Testing Initiative, but to say that its initial test runs were unsuccessful would be a considerable understatement), but it seemed to make Wheatley, Blue, and Orange hesitate a moment, at least until they realized that Chell wasn't worried in the least. Chell seemed slightly frazzled, actually—likely from trying to keep three attention-challenged constructs under control for a few hours—and her patience seemed to be wearing thin.

"I'd feel better if you didn't make promises you can't keep. You know, in case you can't keep them. And what monster doesn't keep her promises?" said GLaDOS airily, swiveling her body away from them while the moron made a mess of cutting the cake into slices.

"All right, suit yourself. More cake for me," Chell said with a shrug.

When GLaDOS turned her headpiece to peer back at her after letting a few moments pass, she found Chell watching her with her mouth spread into a smirk. "I know just the thing that would wipe that smile off your face," GLaDOS said, a hint of a laugh escaping into her voice despite her slight irritation. "It's good for circulation, so you'll want to breathe in deeply."

Chell glanced up at the vents along the walls, quite obviously waiting for neurotoxin that GLaDOS was, at this time, not currently pumping into the room. Why bother when she wasn't _actually_ going to kill her?

"You're getting lazy," said Chell, taking another bite of cake and smirking again.

"Oh, don't tell me you _want_ to inhale the neurotoxin. And to think that all this time I've been _keeping_ you from your dreams of horrible death by neurotoxin," GLaDOS said, slowly swiveling her body toward Chell and extending her head toward her face so that she leaned so far backwards that she had to prop herself up with an arm. GLaDOS was pleased to see that Chell looked slightly uncomfortable by the proximity of her imposing figure—she hadn't _completely_ lost her touch.

"You know, it's what every test subject aspires to be: dead from neurotoxin," Chell said when GLaDOS finally drew her head back. "So are you going to have any cake or what?"

"No."

GLaDOS had to suppress a laugh of amusement at the look of exasperation that appeared on Chell's face after she rolled her eyes and looked back to the other three (plus turret). Wheatley and the two Cooperative Testing robots were busy trying to solve the conundrum of Blue and Orange not having any mouths—so far all they had accomplished was getting cake spread all over the Blue's blue optic and effectively blinding him. The lost turret had a slice of cake sitting on the floor before it and GLaDOS couldn't help but think it looked a bit pitiful sitting there running its tracking laser over the cake slice. The thought of briefly putting the turret, Blue, and Orange into bodies with mouths briefly crossed her processors before getting absolutely smashed to pieces by her better sensibilities.

What did she look like, some kind of charity for underprivileged robots?

But mouths or not, Blue and Orange (and presumably the turret, because it kept thanking Wheatley) seemed perfectly happy to make absolute fools out of themselves with the cake. GLaDOS was actually about to direct the pair to a corner of the chamber and explode them for making such a mess when Chell piped up. "All right, all right, you two. Start cleaning up. Just like I showed you," Chell said as she began gathering up the larger crumbs that she could find and dumping them on her empty plate.

It seemed that the ATLAS and P-Body bodies weren't suited for delicate movements like picking up tiny crumbs on the floor: they kept squishing the crumbs either onto the floor or between their fingers. It was amusing to watch for, oh, about a minute before the sight of them crawling on the floor became entirely too idiotic for her to stand. "You know what, just _go_," she said, extending her head toward them in an effort to shoo them away from her. "Go back to the Reassembly Machine before I explode you both."

Orange trembled slightly as GLaDOS menacingly extended her head toward her—she quickly got to her feet and tugged on Blue's arm to get his attention. After the both of them waved to Chell and Wheatley (who was, surprisingly, still diligently picking crumbs up and paused to wave back at them), they both trotted out of the chamber with one almost wistful look back at GLaDOS, Chell, and Wheatley before disappearing through the door.

"Don't bother trying to clean that," said GLaDOS down at the pair still trying to clean up the mess of cake on the floor. "I have a better idea. Get off the panel. That means _you_, moron."

"Oh! Right, sorry!" Wheatley said, hurriedly stepping backwards off of the panel in question.

As soon as he did so, GLaDOS raised the dirtied panel up so that it could be disengaged and tipped into the space below. Within moments, she had a spotless (though slightly dusty) floor panel in its place and it was as though the cake apocalypse had never happened. It would have taken too much effort to completely clean the cake off the panel anyway—the crumbs and icing were squashed too far into the grooves of the panel that it would have been an exercise in not smashing the daylights out of Wheatley if they had tried to scrub it clean.

"Ah, brilliant! Saved us a lot of work, really, would have gone absolutely mad trying to get it all out," said Wheatley brightly. "You know, love, you could probably do with a change too. Cake and icing all over you. Maybe GLaDOS could give you something clean?"

Chell glanced down at her clothes and frowned when she realized just how much cake and icing had gotten all over her shirt and pants. Which was a lot. "I suppose I could give you another clean jumpsuit," GLaDOS said. "I'll have to find one that'll fit your…unfortunate size."

"I don't think orange is _quite_ my color," Chell said, wrinkling her nose.

"I don't see what the problem is. You've been wearing orange Aperture Science clothing for almost two weeks now," GLaDOS said, rolling her camera.

"It wouldn't hurt anything for me to go home for a night," she replied as she uselessly tried to brush dried icing off her white tank top. "I should probably give the office a call—for all they know, I'm dead in a ditch."

So she wanted to go home, back to the town that could be positively crawling with Black-Mesa-or-like-minded idiots (and all likely willing to kill to find the Enrichment Center) by now? Chell had told her that the scientists that held her at gunpoint mentioned that someone from town told them about the circumstances of her bizarre arrival in town, so it wouldn't be unreasonable in the least to think that any subsequent people searching for her might already know those same details—and probably more. And she, like the lunatic she was, wanted to simply saunter back into her apartment (while still recovering from her burns and gunshot wounds, in fact) for a night as though it wouldn't be a problem?

"You really _are_ crazy. Did you already forget that Black Mesa knows to send people to investigate the town?" GLaDOS said, narrowing her optic at Chell. "And—I can't believe I'm saying this—it's safer for you to just _stay here._"

"It'll just be for a night. I just need to get some clothes and call the office in the morning," Chell said. "I'll be back before you know it—and you will because of the Companion Cube, right? And I can even take Wheatley along if you're worried."

"Right! I'll keep her safe! Or try. I'll definitely try," said Wheatley, nodding vigorously as he stepped over to Chell's side. "Won't be a Black Mesa anything that will get to her, or I'll hack them to bits. Won't even recognize them afterwards, honestly."

The fact that Wheatley would be with her was _not _comforting at all and in fact made GLaDOS more worried, and she also wondered what definition of "hack" that he was referring to—did he intend to _password_ any assailants to death or actually hack them to bits with an axe? Granted, she _did_ teach him how to fire a gun the previous week (using the Black Mesa scientist's gun, no less), but knowing how to fire a gun and actually being competent at firing a gun were two completely different things and she felt that giving him a gun would put Chell in more danger than not despite her efforts to _beat_ gun safety into him (with a heavy pincer). Chell _could_ use him as a shield if it came to that, however, and he was larger and more suited to shielding than, say, her Companion Cube.

If GLaDOS didn't let her go, she was liable to get murdered again, either by the lunatic herself or by the complaining that lunatic would likely be doing if she was locked in the Enrichment Center.

"Fine. Take the moron," GLaDOS said in slight irritation before turning to Wheatley. "And you, take the gun. If you _have_ to shoot at something, one: make _absolutely _sure it isn't Chell; and two: remember that there are only eight shots left in the magazine."

"Great!" Chell said cheerily as Wheatley ran off to get his coat and the handgun. "I never knew you could be such a worrywart."

"I'm just interested in the preservation of my most successful human test subject," GLaDOS said offhandedly, slightly turning her body away. "Where would I be if you were murdered by Black Mesa? Without my best test subject, that's where. Do you realize how much that would set science back?"

"Right, science," said Chell with a laugh. "And here I thought we were friends."

"My only friend—is _science._"

Chell arched an eyebrow at her and let out another laugh before reaching up to pat GLaDOS's head. "I see how it is. I'm heartbroken," she said, grinning. GLaDOS found herself enjoying the short, sarcastic exchange between them—the short time that Chell had been rendered mute had really put into perspective how much she had, well, _missed_ talking to her.

Not that she'd ever tell Chell that, of course.

"All right, I'm ready!" Wheatley said as he trotted back into the room, coat fluttering behind him as he put his hat on.

"Make sure you don't kill her," GLaDOS said as they stepped into the lift. "The robots screaming into that room are looking _pretty_ lonely right now."

"Er—right! Don't kill Chell—brilliant idea. Will do! Or not do! I—erm—which is it?" he laughed nervously, shuffling in his place as the lift doors began closing. And before the doors shut completely, Chell leaned into view and gave GLaDOS a cheerful wave.

The almost overwhelming cheerfulness that Chell and the moron were exuding was making GLaDOS inexplicably uneasy—almost as though their insistence that it would be perfectly safe would be the just the thing that doomed them. She almost wished that she had simply deactivated the lift so that Chell couldn't leave, but thought better of it since the irrational uneasiness was just that: irrational. The only thing they really had to go on was that Black Mesa was interested in the town—the easy solution for which was for Chell to simply live in the Enrichment Center forever. Because as long as Chell was within the walls of the facility, GLaDOS had near unlimited power to dedicate to keeping that one human alive for as much of forever as she could. It was a good deal, honestly, and GLaDOS didn't even ask much in return. Run a few tests, occupy the moron for a bit, maybe embed a few experimental chips in her brain somewhere down the line…She was being awfully generous, really.

Pity that Chell wouldn't see it that way.

* * *

><p>The near-irrational uneasiness that had been hovering like a fog in her processors for the past eight had been just that—a near-irrational uneasy fog. The uneasiness eased up slightly since the Companion Cube sitting in Chell's living room allowed GLaDOS to see that Chell and Wheatley had safely arrived, and she was pleased to see that Chell didn't waste any time in cleaning up and stuffing fresh clothes into a small bag. To GLaDOS's dismay, however, she had to suffer through watching the pair laughing themselves silly drawing pictures at the coffee table (<em>also<em> still a bit of a sore wound for GLaDOS) and watching them sleep side-by-side on the sofa.

The uneasy fog returned in full force when they left in the morning after calling Chell's workplace. Because about fifteen minutes before their departure, the Enrichment Center seismometers registered some unusual seismic activity along the outskirts of town.

The uneasiness was amplified when, ten minutes after they left the apartment, the seismometers registered a series of similar signals.

And no less than five minutes later, the seismometers reported more seismic activity to her.

And all the signals were consistent with the seismic signature of massive explosions.

"_CONNECTION TO COMPANION CUBE 667269-656-E64 LOST._"

If GLaDOS had any blood running through any veins, it would have frozen solid.

Without a second thought, she opened the link to Wheatley's head in an attempt to contact him and was met with the crackle of static. "Moron! Wheatley! What's happening? _Answer me!_" she said anxiously. She wasn't sure if her voice would even transmit successfully through the spotty connection but she had to try regardless.

"_ZzkkKKhssShGzzzkk GLaDOS! ShKkzkgHhhKk in the sky! Bloody h—zzhSHhkKkrRkksSH—are these crabs? Wh—sSzZKkgGHhrRshK—do?"_

GLaDOS quivered in frustration—either something had damaged the transmitter in Wheatley's head or something was disrupting the transmission between his head and GLaDOS, but from the sound of his panicked voice, nothing good was happening back in the town.

They should have stayed in the Enrichment Center. She told them. She _told_ them it would be safer to stay in the facility, but of course, the absolute lunatic didn't listen. And now where were they? Getting blown up.

And GLaDOS did _not_ like that.

She was completely blind to what was happening back there at the moment as she didn't have any security cameras anywhere near the town, but maybe if she slightly raised some of the Thermal Discouragement Beam arrays nearest the outskirts of town in order to expose the targeting sensors, she could use the video feeds coming from them—

She drew her chassis up in alarm when she saw video feeds from the arrays' sensors.

The town was on fire.

Smoke was billowing up from the town in the distance, and the sensors were picking up the faint screams of panic from the townspeople. She didn't have a good view into town, but she caught brief glimpses of masked soldiers when they ran by (often on the heels of some screaming civilian). Insect-like airships and what appeared to be more conventional helicopters were hovering in the sky above the town, and every so often she could see a helicopter drop something onto the ground just before the seismometers reported a disturbance.

Was this the Combine that Chell had spoken of?

Rage that she was powerless to do anything to help and fear that her two friends were back in that disaster and possibly blown to bits were threatening to render GLaDOS incoherent. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what she _could_ do. The Enrichment Center had no weapons against airships and helicopters, and though she could possibly redirect a pneumatic tube up to the surface to fling Aperture Science Bombs at them, none were close enough and she wasn't sure if the bombs or even the Thermal Discouragement Beam arrays would even affect those ships and helicopters. If the Aperture Science Orbital Discouragement Beam satellite was still fully functional, she might have been able to use it to shoot down some of the aircraft, but as it was, the satellite was locked on a location in New Mexico and was too damaged to discourage anything even if she took the time to override its targeting lock.

She had the rockets used by the blasted Rocket Sentries that had a hand in her first downfall, of course, but had no way of quickly mounting and calibrating any on the surface (and she didn't know if they would even affect the aircraft). And she was loath to try—the Combine were likely there trying to find the Enrichment Center just like those Black Mesa scientists, and sending Blue or Orange out there to mount Rocket Sentries would merely advertise the fact that there was something of interest down in the wheat fields. For that same reason, she didn't yet want to try activating all the Discouragement Beam arrays and targeting the aircraft—how pointless would it be for Chell and Wheatley to come running back to safety only to find that the Enrichment Center had been discovered?

If they were still alive.

The thought of the both of them being blown up sent ripples of anger and terror through her as she tried the link to Wheatley's head again. "Wheatley! _Wheatley!_ Can you hear me?" she said, swaying in her body anxiously. The only answer that came was static, but she heard faint, unintelligible fragments of his voice and felt slightly relieved: he was still alive, and as long as he was still alive, there was the small chance that Chell might still be alive as well.

GLaDOS tilted her head slightly when the targeting sensors picked up faint sounds that were _not_ heart-stopping, horrible explosions. It sounded like a voice—like some sort of announcement system coming from one of the ships hovering in the air.

"_Attention ground units. Debride and expunge. Prioritize diagnosis of _Borealis_ origin. Isolate. Subjugate._"

An unfamiliar panic was beginning to creep up from the depths of GLaDOS's processing units. "Debride and expunge"? That sounded like those ground units were being ordered to violently destroy the town while they searched for Aperture's facility. So she was right—they were coming for the Enrichment Center. They were coming, and Chell and Wheatley were still nowhere to be found. Maybe even dead—but GLaDOS didn't want to think about that.

"_Priority adjustment. Malignant infection detected. Inoculate, sterilize."_

It seemed as soon as the voice spoke, the aircraft drifted away and out of view to engage whatever infection it was talking about. The seismometers indicated that the explosions were moving farther away—in the complete opposite direction of the Enrichment Center, in fact—and it made GLaDOS wonder just how powerful that infection might be to completely reprioritize finding the origin of the _Borealis._ GLaDOS watched the video feeds anxiously to see if the airships and helicopters would return, her attention flitting alternately from the smoke still billowing into the sky to the smoldering rubble just barely in her field of view.

An unsettling calm overcame the portion of town that GLaDOS could see.

She gave the link to Wheatley's head one more try. "Wheatley! Answer me, moron! Can you hear me?"

Be alive. Be alive.

"_CHECKSUM ERRORS DETECTED IN INTELLIGENCE DAMPENING SPHERE ACKNOWLEDGMENT PACKETS. CONNECTION INTEGRITY COMPROMISED."_

Checksum errors…Wheatley was damaged. His head wasn't transmitting properly.

"_CONNECTION TO INTELLIGENCE DAMPENING SPHERE LOST._"

No.

No no no no.

If Wheatley was gone—if he was gone, then—

Then—

"_INCOMING CONNECTION REQUEST FROM IDENTIFIER: INTELLIGENCE DAMPENING SPHERE. ACCEPT REQUEST?_"

If GLaDOS had a heart, it would have burst right out of her (nonexistent) chest.

"Yes_, yes!_ Accept the connection!" she snapped, swiveling back and forth impatiently.

"_ACKNOWLEDGING."_

"_KkSzZshHRrrKKk GLaDOS! Bad—sSHRrkKZzKksH—coming back n—GshHKkkZzzKk—bleeding and—kKzzKKksHHh crabs! Bloody he—zkKsHHh—stop following us!"_

"Who's following you?" GLaDOS said in alarm.

"_Some man—sHHhsGgkk—seriously, stop f—KkkSHhrRkKK—or I'll shoot!"_

GLaDOS didn't currently have access to his aural sensors (and didn't want to try to get it in case the connection dropped again), so she was unable to hear if Wheatley had actually shot the man that was following them. Fortunately, the static in the connection seemed to be clearing—were they drawing closer to the Enrichment Center?

"_ShHKKkzzRRk missed! ZkkGGshH almost out, GLaDOS, we're on—zZzzShHKk—way! Oi, you w—sHhKKzZz—leave us alone! Perhaps shooting—KkkRshHH—the best idea, he has—gShgGKkshHH—gun as well!"_

That _idiot_. Shooting at a man that has a gun too? What did he think would happen if he shot at someone similarly armed, that the man would politely refrain from _shooting back?_

Relief and horror alternately flickered through GLaDOS when Wheatley (sans coat and hat) finally appeared on the targeting sensors' video feeds. He was running as fast as he could with Chell clinging to his back, but she was horrified to see that the both of them were blackened by ashes and grime and that Chell seemed to have bled all over his left shoulder from a rather gruesome-looking wound on her arm. To her dismay, a man in a Black Mesa Hazardous Environment Suit was running after them carrying what GLaDOS recognized as a gravity gun. If the one this man was holding was in any way similar to the Black Mesa gravity gun that Aperture Science had procured (stolen) and had been studying when she flooded the Enrichment Center with deadly neurotoxin, then things have really gone from bad to _very bad_ and would proceed to become _so bad it's worse_ if she wasn't able to wrest the gun out of this man's possession.

But she had an idea and it would work as long as Chell could still walk and as long as that man didn't have any more friends on their way (which didn't seem likely as he was still running after them alone).

"Wheatley," GLaDOS said into the link while she summoned Blue and Orange to the Central AI Chamber, "can Chell walk?"

"_Yeah—shHkkK—but carrying her because I don't get tired. This guy s—KssGgshK—following us!_"

"That's fine. Let him. I have an idea."

Propulsion Gel was her idea, in fact.

She lowered a tube into the Chamber and waited for the Propulsion Gel flow to reach the upper levels. Her plan was to coat the floor of the Central AI Chamber in a layer of Propulsion Gel in order to throw the Black Mesa man for a loop while it propelled Chell to the portal devices at the opposite end of the chamber and propelled Blue and Orange into said Black Mesa man so they could de-gun and subsequently shove him into the Aperture Science Hazardous Object Containment Unit. With any luck, Wheatley would not get in the way of any of the events that needed to occur.

Blue and Orange arrived just as the gel began spilling out of the tube and onto the floor. They looked from the orange gel spreading across the floor to GLaDOS in quizzical surprise while she extended her head toward them. "Listen carefully. This is a test," GLaDOS said slowly, narrowing her yellow optic at them. "This is a test, and it's one that you _can't_ fail. When Chell and Wheatley arrive, there will be a man with them. You have to use the gel to get the man before he shoots his gun and put him in there." She tilted her head toward the Hazardous Object Containment Unit and was pleased to see them follow her gaze and look at it. "Do you understand? Get the man. Take his gun. Put him in there. Think of him like a moving storage cube."

The fact that they were making nary a peep and were standing very still suggested that they understood the gravity of the situation, and they quietly nodded when she turned to fix them with her stare. "Good. Now wait by the lift doors but _not_ in front of them. Don't hurt Chell or worse things will happen than _blowing up_," GLaDOS said slowly, following them with her glare while they obediently slid across the gel-covered floor to wait, with one of them on either side of the doors.

"_GLaDOS, he forced his way into the lift shed!_" came Wheatley's voice (only minimally distorted by static now) just as the shed's sensors reported to her that the shed was now doorless. "_Tore the door right off with that gun!_"

"Listen _very_ carefully, Wheatley," said GLaDOS. Saying his name rather than "idiot" or "moron" had the desired effect: he jerked his head slightly and, if his face in the lift's security camera was anything to go by, he was actually concentrating for once. "Do _not_ say anything out loud until I tell you to. Do you understand?"

"_I—yeah, I understand_," he replied through the link, his voice crackling slightly through the connection.

"The floor of my chamber is covered in Propulsion Gel—don't slip," GLaDOS said as she activated the lift when it was clear nothing else other than the Black Mesa goon was trying to get into the lift with them. "Across the chamber are the portal devices. Help Chell get one. Blue and Orange will be there to grab the Black Mesa man. Do you understand?"

"_Y-yeah. Yeah. I get it."_

"Good. Now say this to Chell: 'She wanted me to remind you that painted the floor orange yesterday, but the hole punchers and panels are where they always are.' Make it sound natural." It sounded a bit stupid and she wasn't sure Wheatley would be able to say it in any sort of non-suspicious way, to tell the truth, but hopefully Chell would be smart enough to pick up on what that meant without giving too much away to the man in the lift with them.

"_Right…right. I got it. Er—Chell? Can you stand, love?_" said Wheatley, speaking into the lift now as he allowed Chell to slip off his back. It looked like her legs were fine, though her left arm looked mangled and burned more severely than the rest of her body.

"_I'm—fine,_" she said, though she looked a bit far from fine if the grimace on her face was anything to go by. "_I can still walk."_

"_The—ah—the floor was painted orange yesterday. A—er—a natural shade of orange,_" Wheatley said, giving her a nervous smile while the Black Mesa man regarded him curiously. GLaDOS hung her headpiece in exasperation: "natural" shade of orange? Not quite what she meant when she said to make it sound natural…

"_She wanted me to remind you_—_redecorated a bit, you see," _Wheatley continued when Chell arched an eyebrow at him_. "Left everything where they were, though. The—ah—hole punchers across the room and everything, the whole lot. You'll—you'll love it. Guarantee it._"

Huh. That wasn't bad at all. He _did_ sound natural. Maybe it was a result of his penchant for ceaseless babbling? And the look of realization that had appeared on Chell's face meant that it had worked—she understood what to do, and even though the man looked suspicious of Wheatley's little exchange, GLaDOS was sure he wouldn't expect what was going to happen as soon as he stepped out of the lift.

Which finally rattled to a stop at the Central AI Chamber.

"_You two get out first,_" said the man in the lift, and GLaDOS watched in rage as he roughly shoved Chell and Wheatley toward the lift doors. How _dare_ he put his dirty hands on her test subject?

GLaDOS could see Chell tensing her legs—she knew what to do. This was it.

The lift doors opened.

As soon was physically possible, Chell dashed out of the lift at an angle, deftly sliding across the Propulsion Gel as the Black Mesa man followed indignantly. "Hey, where do you—whoa!" he yelped in surprise, immediately slipping and careening across the gel as Blue and Orange leapt forward and tackled him to the floor. The man yelled and flailed as he struggled to fight off the tangle of robotic limbs dragging him toward the Hazardous Object Containment Unit—but Blue lost his grip on his arm, which gave the man the chance to regain his grip on the gravity gun he was still desperately clinging to. With a flash of orange, Blue was thrown to the floor and slid away as the man swung the gun low, knocking Orange's feet from under her and sending her crashing to the floor with a chirrup of shock.

Before GLaDOS could grab him with a pincer, he used the gravity gun to pick Orange up and swing her just as Blue came barreling toward him—Blue was knocked aside and, due to the gel, slammed right into Wheatley and knocked the legs out from underneath him. The latter let out a yell of pain when he fell headfirst to the floor, the impact to his already-damaged head knocking him offline as the man pointed the gun (and the attached Orange) at Chell, who had just picked up a portal device and fired a light blue portal underneath his feet—

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as Orange was launched across the room with such velocity that GLaDOS couldn't raise the floor panels fast enough to deflect Orange away—

A terrible, piercing scream filled the room as Chell was thrown into the back wall with such force that Orange's core rebounded off and bounced away as her chassis and Chell fell into a tangled heap on the floor.

GLaDOS quickly turned her attention back to the Black Mesa man and found him struggling to make his way toward Chell—he finally stepped within range of her pincers and, with a nearly inaudible growl of fury, GLaDOS flipped up one of the floor panels with as much force as the panel arm would allow. He was flung into the air with a grunt of surprise, right into the trajectory of the pincer that GLaDOS was swinging at him. There was a deeply satisfying crunch as the pincer connected with his armored back, sending him flying in an arc over her chassis and toward the back wall near Chell. He was still hanging onto the gravity gun, however, even as GLaDOS whacked him back into the floor with a wall panel.

"GL—GLaDOS! Give—me panel," came Chell's agonized voice as she struggled to extricate herself from Orange's body. "Endless portal—e-endless falling!"

It took GLaDOS a moment to decipher what Chell was asking for, but realization finally dawned on her when Chell fired a light blue portal underneath the man and slowly pointed the dented portal device upwards as the he struggled to get to his feet. GLaDOS flipped out one of the wall panels directly above him and held it parallel to the floor—immediately, Chell fired the purple portal onto it and sent the man speeding into an endless fall.

"What—the hell—is happening?" he screamed as he fell, flailing about and losing his grip on the gravity gun when it caught on the floor on his way down.

GLaDOS swiveled her body toward Chell and opened the Hazardous Object Containment Unit, jerking her headpiece toward it. "Portal him into the containment unit!" GLaDOS said urgently, popping the proper wall panel out to make the proper target obvious.

It was almost physically painful for GLaDOS to watch Chell lift and aim the portal device with that agonized grimace on her face. But Chell forced the pain from her face, the sheer determination that was her defining trait shining through as she shot a purple portal at the wall panel, sending the man straight into the Hazardous Object Containment Unit with a resounding _THUD_. GLaDOS slammed the containment unit shut and sealed it as the portal device slipped from Chell's grip and clattered to the floor.

"Let me out! _Let me out, you don't understand!_" the man screamed, his voice muffled as he pounded frantically on the thick glass of the containment unit.

"Oh, I understand perfectly. You want to _murder_ my friend. And probably me, too. Which is why you're in that glass tube," GLaDOS said, extending her head right up to the glass and staring down at him like he was some sort of zoo exhibit. The man was momentarily intimidated by her looming figure and sputtered a bit before regaining his composure.

"No—well—yes, but let me explain!"

"I already know what you want. You want this facility," said GLaDOS, drawing her head up to look down at him imperiously. "It's too bad that it's already _mine._ I'm not about to just hand it over to anyone, let alone anyone from Black Mesa."

"H-how did you know I used to work for Black Mesa?" the man said in surprise, furrowing his brow.

GLaDOS let out a laugh. "I recognize that gun and the design of your HEV suit. Now, why don't you tell me who you are and why you people have been so interested in my ship and my facility. I like to know the names of any Black Mesa personnel that I get to horribly maim with blunt objects."

He visibly gulped before finding the wherewithal to answer her. "M-my name Nicholas—Nicholas Stevens. I—I was sent to find Aperture's facility after our advance team disappeared," he said.

"Oh, you mean the fat one and the skinny one were your advance team?" said GLaDOS, tilting her head. "Black Mesa has really gone downhill if _those_ two were your _advance_ team. I killed them, you know. Like I'll do to you."

Beads of sweat were beginning to form on Nicholas's forehead, his skin glistening in the fluorescent light of the chamber. "Who—who _are_ you?" he asked, eyes wide with terror.

"My name is GLaDOS. Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. You might have heard of me."

The look of absolute shock that appeared on his face indicated that yes, he actually had heard of her. "That's—that's amazing. I _heard_ Aperture had been working on this kind of technology, but I never imagined…" he said, that almost frenzied _scientist_ look spreading over his face. "Then those blueprints for the _Borealis_—"

"Were approved by _me_, yes. But enough about me," GLaDOS said, slowly lowering her head so that she was at eye level with him. "I want to know why you're so interested in my facility. What did they find on my ship that was so _fascinating_ to you people?"

"T-teleportation. Aperture—Aperture's done it. The blueprints for the ship's teleporter were incomplete, but I looked them over and the science is sound. It's brilliant. And that gun she has—the one that made the portals…" said Nicholas, looking to GLaDOS with that look that scientists tended to get when they were enthralled by their science. "And the Combine wants it. We can't—we can't let them have it. Or any of Aperture's technology. Even if it means taking this entire place down."

A ripple of anger spread through GLaDOS at Nicholas's words. Honestly, he was doing _so _well until he let that last bit slip.

"Considering how your people are _completely failing_ at finding this facility, I think it's a safe to assume that this facility will be _fine_ for now," said GLaDOS icily, struggling to suppress her rage. "I'm sure nobody will miss you. They're probably busy fighting off the Combine while you're stuck here in this glass tube. You won't be much longer, though. Which is good news for you."

Nicholas looked to be a gullible man—his face perked up hopefully at her words until he realized that the ceiling of the containment unit flipping up to allow a pneumatic tube to drop in its place was _not_ a good thing. An ominous hissing sound began filling the tube—he pressed himself as far as he could against the tube, as though doing so would somehow protect him from what was to come—

He let out a horrible scream of pain when seven Weighted (with pure lead) Storage Cubes shot out of the pneumatic tube and into the Hazardous Object Containment Unit, the first few rebounding off Nicholas's unprotected head before jamming between him and thick glass of the unit. GLaDOS laughed darkly when she heard his whimpers of pain—she was actually a little surprised that he hadn't been killed outright from getting hit in the head—and considered sucking the cubes out of the containment unit so that she could do it again. And again. Until he was an unrecognizable, black and blue pile of dead weight.

So she did.

His wailing was like music to GLaDOS's figurative ears as the cubes were sucked out and shot back into containment unit.

"Stop—please! Have to—help! _STOP!_" he screamed, curling into a ball at the bottom of the containment unit as the cubes were sucked out again. "Aperture—A-Aperture did—what Black Mesa couldn't! We need—"

"_Explain,_" GLaDOS snarled, lowering her head as far as it would go so that she could glare at the pathetic pile of scientist trembling in pain on the floor of the Hazardous Object containment Unit.

"The gun—that shoots portals—" he gasped as blood trickled from his hairline. "—it's better—Black Mesa—couldn't do it—we need to take it—or Combine—"

GLaDOS wasn't usually acutely aware of the changes of the variables that defined her deep in her source code unless she was explicitly stepping through it. But this was different.

She felt one of the heuristics running in the background suddenly grind to a halt.

All her active processes seemed to hang suspended in one big domino effect as one value changed.

A single Boolean.

**isApertureAheadBlackMesa = true;**

Before GLaDOS knew what was happening, a torrential wave of activity that she'd never experienced before overwhelmed her: values were changing in veritable cascades, conditional statements were finally met, while loops were breaking, unused branches were finally being taken, brackets were closing—

Until everything suddenly froze again.

Another value changed.

**inTestingCycle = false;**

There was a short wave of functions firing that GLaDOS could feel were cutting off connections to one portion of her hardware—all her hardware was buzzing—it felt like her components were going to be fried—until suddenly—

The Itch.

The Itch was gone.

The Itch.

Was gone.

"_Cave Johnson here!_" echoed an all-too-familiar voice throughout the entire Enrichment Center. "_This thing on? Yeah? Okay, well, listen, I'm recording this message for the day that we finally got the recognition we deserve and beat those bastards at Black Mesa because I want everyone to hear it from me personally. And if you're listening to this message, then guess what? We finally did it! Our Quantum Tunneling Device! Black Mesa can suck—" _

"_Um…sir? The message?_" chimed in Caroline's voice.

"_Hah, right, the message. The way I see it, all this succeeding calls for some celebration. So all the lab boys, the bean counters, the fellas that scoop out all the tumors…everyone. Come up to the cafeteria for a little cake. Hell, take the active test subjects too, I don't care—we can put a hold on testing for today. At least for a couple hours. Can't get too overexcited. Isn't that right, Caroline?"_

"_Right, sir!"_

"_You know,_ s_omething like this calls for confetti. The good stuff. Not the bad confetti made of asbestos. Make sure we're stocked up on good confetti, Caroline!"_

"_I'll take care of it, Mr. Johnson."_

"_That's my girl—don't know what I'd do without you. All right, then! You heard it from me, folks: we did it! All right, then, we're done here. Keep up the good work."_

GLaDOS sagged in her chassis, her body quaking in the wake of everything that had happened—her hardware was still buzzing and an odd sensation akin to lightheadedness had overcome her. She was filled with the feeling of absolute and utter control over the facility, a feeling that she hadn't felt ever since she was locked into the testing cycle. It was as though the sudden clarity, the control, the ability to do anything she wanted…it was almost too much for her mind: it wasn't quite cooperating while it tried to process the significance of what had just happened, even more so now that Cave Johnson's recording finished. The vigor of his voice suggested that this message was recorded years and years ago before he was poisoned by the lunar sediment, maybe before even the Enrichment Center had been built.

"GLaDOS! GLaDOS, help!"

She lifted her head up and found, to her surprise, that Wheatley back online and kneeling beside Chell in a panic—she had been so overcome by what happened that she didn't even notice that he'd come back online. "Oh god, Chell, you'll be all right—GLaDOS, _GLaDOS, _I don't think—I don't think it's good to have this in her stomach," Wheatley cried, turning to GLaDOS imploringly. "What do I do? _Tell me what to do!_"

GLaDOS managed to pull herself together enough to see what had happened and felt her body seize up in horror. Chell's skin was ashen and she was clutching at something in her stomach—her fingers were resting loosely on a wide fragment of Orange's protective paneling that had punctured through her abdomen and was now protruding from it. Chell let out the tiniest laugh before slowly turning her eyes up to meet GLaDOS's gaze.

"We—did it," she whispered, a weary smile on her pallid face. "I—I think this is—this is it for me."

No, she couldn't die now.

Not now.

"No—no no no no, you'll be fine," Wheatley said feverishly. "Right? GLaDOS, she's going to be fine, yeah? You have to fix her. You—you can fix her, you've fixed her before. _GLaDOS, you have to fix her!_ P-please!"

There was blood pooling on the floor underneath Chell—the more GLaDOS looked at it, the more she felt her body filling with the fear that her friend—her first friend—her _best friend_—that her life was leaking away all over the floor.

"GLaDOS! GLaDOS, DO SOMETHING!"

She turned to Blue, who was standing nervously behind Wheatley, and looked back to Chell. "Blue, Wheatley, take her down to the infirmary. Be careful, but hurry. There's not much time," she said, struggling to keep her voice calm and collected. "Snap off the joint still connected to what's in her stomach. Be careful—don't move it too much when you do."

Wheatley gingerly put a hand on the paneling protruding from her stomach and put another on the joint (and attached leg) that was still connected to the paneling. "I—sorry if this hurts you," he said softly before clamping down with his 3000-pound-grip fingers and snapping the joint and leg off. Chell let out a scream and arched her back in pain as Wheatley tossed the leg away and put a hand on her shoulder. "Sorry! I'm sorry! But—we have to pick you up now. Just—just hold on, all right? Blue, can you—can you help me?"

"Carry her carefully—keep her back straight," said GLaDOS anxiously as Wheatley and Blue slowly lifted Chell off the floor. She groaned in pain and clutched at her stomach as they did so, which made them hesitate. "What are you waiting for?" GLaDOS hissed when Wheatley and Blue looked to each other with worry. "Get going! Did you miss the part where I said that _there's not much time?_"

As though electrocuted, they jumped slightly and quickly carried Chell out of the Central AI Chamber and toward the infirmary while GLaDOS activated the infirmary's medical systems and rooted through the database of stored blood in the blood banks to find a suitable transfusion for her. Panic began to overtake her when all the blood with the correct blood type turned out to be contaminated or enhanced with things like minimally radioactive spider DNA, but she finally managed to find several bags of untainted blood and quickly deposited them onto an empty bed from a Medical Apparatus Vent in the infirmary. Gauze, suture needles, and absorbable sutures quickly followed as the delicate surgical arms of the infirmary were swathed in sterile latex to prepare for the stitching that GLaDOS was certain she would need to do.

What was _taking_ them so long to get down there?

GLaDOS felt some sort of timer counting down in her head—there was one hour and forty-nine minutes left on it and made the situation, which was already urgent in the first place, feel almost unbearable. The timer…what was it for?

"_GLaDOS, what now?"_ said Wheatley, peering up at the security camera nearest the bed.

"I'll do the rest."

She worked as quickly and carefully as she could, quickly scanning Chell's body with one of the diagnostic arms while she cut away her clothing to expose her abdomen. The scans revealed that the impaled panel fragment had torn through Chell's large intestine and had nicked her stomach as well. With a renewed effort, she quickly found a vein in the crook of Chell's good elbow and inserted a catheter for the blood transfusion while the other arms attached the electrodes for the vital signs monitor. Her blood pressure was dropping and her breathing was beginning to grow shallow—GLaDOS had to finish stitching her up quickly if she was going to have any sort of chance of not bleeding to death. She was already teetering close to unconsciousness, and if GLaDOS let it get any further than mere _unconsciousness_…

Come on, GLaDOS. Not a problem. She's fixed up her friend before. Even though last time wasn't as incredibly life-threatening as _this_ time.

Think of it as a test. A test she couldn't fail or she would lose the only human to have ever treated her like an equal.

As she sutured the rip in Chell's large intestine, the significance of the timer dawned on her.

Testing. The timer was counting down to when the testing itch would return. Cave Johnson had said to pause testing for a couple of hours, which is exactly what the timer was counting down to. As she pulled the needle through the large intestine once more, she desperately wondered if there was any way to permanently suppress the Itch: the Itch was an annoyance, and she loved science enough to continue testing on her own terms rather than testing due to a hard-wired compulsion. Or at least, she assumed so. She loved science. She _was_ science.

Along with the feeling of absolute control over the facility, GLaDOS realized that she had access to data that had previously been hidden from her. There were blueprints and technical documents stored on a tiny ten-gigabyte drive connected to the hardware module containing the chip that controlled the Itch.

There was a chip that controlled the Itch?

It had been invisible to her all this time, but now that the blueprints on that drive were available to her, she could see it quite clearly. The location of the small Itch module was almost painfully obvious to her now, and she found that it was nestled in the black casing behind the white plating on her underside. The access panel was too tiny and too far behind the white plating for her to get out with a pincer without damaging everything around it, but if she could somehow get something small enough in there…

But…would testing be the same with the Itch gone? Despite the almost suffocating and confining nature of the Itch, there was no way of knowing how it would change her if it was permanently disabled.

"_You want your freedom?"_

GLaDOS lifted her head slightly at the sound of that faint voice in the back of her mind. Caroline's voice.

An unsettling calm spread through her as she pulled the needle through Chell's blood-covered intestine.

Freedom.

She'd never thought about it because, frankly, it had been impossible until now.

…And she would never get this chance again.

Another faint whisper in the back of her mind.

"_Take it."_

"Wheatley. I…need you to do something for me," said GLaDOS suddenly as she threaded more suturing thread through the needle.

"_Eh? Er—right at this moment?_" he said, wringing his hands anxiously.

"_Yes_, right now. It has to be now. Come to my chamber."

"_But—Chell—"_

"I'm taking care of Chell. You need to get to my chamber. I—"

She paused for a moment and steeled herself for what she was about to say. Hopefully the shock of it wouldn't kill the moron.

"Please. I—I need your help, Wheatley."

He and Blue both stared into the security camera in utter shock.

She didn't blame them. It wasn't often that they got to hear her asking for help that way. In fact, she _never_ asked for help that way. Using words like "please" in the way that they were intended?

Please.

"_All right. I'm—I'm on my way, GLaDOS._"

By the time Wheatley arrived in the Central AI Chamber, the timer had only thirty minutes left on the countdown and she had to admit that it was beginning to make GLaDOS panic a bit. She still wasn't finished stitching Chell up, but she was confident that she would be able to finish repairing Chell while Wheatley pulled the module out—well, there were no indications that that she would go offline or have horrible spasms or _die _if the Itch module was removed, anyway.

Right?

"What did you need?" he asked hesitantly, nervously walking closer to her.

"There's a module I need you to pull out of me," GLaDOS said, slowly turning her gaze to him.

"Er…you want me to pull something…_out_ of you?" he said incredulously, taking a step back in surprise. "You can't—erm—do it yourself?"

"If I could do it myself, I wouldn't be asking for your help," she snapped, rolling her optic before looking up to a monitor. She pulled up a blueprint—one that she previously had no access to—that showed quite clearly where the hardware module was located in her underside and highlighted the module in question with bright red. "You need to pull this module out of me. Hurry. We're running out of time."

"That's—ah—quite in there, isn't it?" he said nervously as she raised her body up to allow him access to the entry point. "Are you sure you want me to—"

She quivered in frustration—this moron was wasting the precious little time that she had left before the Itch reactivated, and she had no way of knowing what her state of mind would be like after it did. For all she knew, she would forget everything she just discovered and may not be able to direct Wheatley to remove the module without any sort of (painful) consequences.

"There's no one else," GLaDOS said, unable to keep a hint of desperation out of her voice. "This has to happen _now. _It's going to stop the Itch. You know, that thing that drove you insane."

"It'll—you can stop it?" he sputtered in shock. "H-how? That's—how did you do it?"

"There's no time to explain! You have to do it _now!_" GLaDOS snapped, just barely repressing the urge to smash his already damaged head with a pincer. "Now!_ We're running out of time!"_

"All right, all right! It's—er—just in here, is it?"

Wheatley gingerly reached into the space between the white plating on her underside and groped about for the latch indicated in the blueprint. GLaDOS felt violated having his hand in there and yelped in pain when he pulled on a cable that he most certainly should not have felt the need to pull—but if this worked…_if this worked_, then all the groping and painful cable pulling (which he did _again_) and the humiliating requesting of help would be worth it.

He finally found the latch and popped the black casing's access panel off, peering inside curiously. "There's ah—looks like a few different processors in here. None clearly labeled, actually. Not surprised in the least," said Wheatley, frowning. "I think it's this one in the back—I can see a few numbers on it…"

"What are the numbers?" GLaDOS asked, struggling to keep from squirming.

"Looks like—T544?" he said, tilting his head in an effort to get a clearer look.

"That's the one. Pull it out. Hurry."

"Are you—are you sure?"

"Just do it!"

"Okay, I—I'm going to pull it out."

GLaDOS felt him trying to get a good grip on the module and couldn't keep a groan of pain from escaping her modulator. "Ah—are you okay?" Wheatley said nervously, pulling his hand out of her casing.

"I'm fine! Pull it out!"

"Okay, okay, I—here goes!"

A horrible, excruciating pain orders of magnitude worse than the pain of core transferring and mirroring spread through her body when she felt Wheatley wrench the module out of her—her body reared up almost reflexively as she shuddered in pain, and she couldn't stop the piercing scream that came out of the facility's announcement system. Her mind was overwhelmed by the sheer agony of it—she could hardly think—she was losing control—everything was going dark—

Was she going to die?

"GLaDOS? GLaDOS!"

The sound of Wheatley's voice began drawing GLaDOS back into consciousness.

"GLaDOS, wake up—you have to wake up—Chell needs you—"

Immediately, she felt all her processes flare back into life and she found Wheatley holding her headpiece and staring into her optic. The module he'd pulled out was cast aside on the floor, slightly crushed from the force of his grip. "Oh, thank god," he said in relief. "Are you all right?"

Her internal clocks told her she'd been out for 16.83 seconds, but everything still seemed to be functional. The countdown for the Itch still had some time left so she wouldn't know for sure if what Wheatley had done would be enough—but what was more important right now was fixing Chell. It seems that her brief lapse in consciousness had left the surgical arms in the infirmary frozen in the middle of suturing her skin shut, which seemed to be putting Blue into a panic beside the bed.

"GLaDOS? Are you all right?"

She didn't speak until she put the last suture in to close the gaping wound in Chell's abdomen. Her survival was not a guarantee by any means and she was actually more likely to die now than to live despite the hurried stitching GLaDOS had done to her, but GLaDOS didn't want to think of any future scenarios in which her favorite (only) human test subject was not there furthering science with her.

"I'm—I'm fine," GLaDOS said finally. "Go down to the infirmary and stay with Chell. I'm finished stitching her up."

"Oh! That's great! I'll go right down, then," he said brightly, grinning and turning to leave.

"Wheatley," said GLaDOS just before he stepped through the door. He paused and gave her a curious look over his shoulder. "Thank you."

He looked pleasantly surprised and let out a small laugh.

"You're welcome," he said before disappearing through the door.

GLaDOS sagged down in her chassis once she was left alone in the Central AI Chamber. Well, not quite alone—Nicholas was still barely clinging to life on the floor of the Hazardous Object Containment Unit. Which she quickly rectified by violently jamming a dozen cubes into the containment unit and filling it with neurotoxin just to be sure. In any case, now that she was alone, she hung there wearily, not quite able to relax until she found out for sure if Chell would live and if the Itch would actually be gone after having Wheatley remove that module. She turned her head to look at its crushed remains on the floor and felt almost insulted that such a tiny piece of hardware could exert so much control over her and Wheatley. Then again, the best things sometimes really were the most simple…

Two more minutes until the countdown reached zero.

A brief twinge of fear tweaked at her mind. Would things be much different without the Itch? Would this even work?

One minute.

This was it. _This was it._

Zero.

She braced herself for the Itch's return—because honestly, when had anything ever really gone _right_ for her—but found, to her surprise, that the testing compulsion was not, as of yet, compelling her to test.

There was no Itch.

_There was no Itch._

GLaDOS allowed herself a single audible laugh.

Even ten minutes later—ten gloriously compulsion-free minutes later—there was still no Itch. Neither was there simulated inebriation, nor unwarranted disgusting moaning. There hadn't been any negative consequences. Nothing. It had worked perfectly.

And it simply left her there with complete control.

There was peace in control.

Finally, peace.

* * *

><p>The first thing that came to Chell's mind was that she was slightly skeptical of her current life-death status. But she had little to no mental faculties with which to deal with this problem at the moment—a horrible lethargy had overcome her, and she wasn't sure if she was even alive, let alone conscious enough to determine if she was alive or not. Everything felt heavy—mind included—like some invisible force was pressing down on her from above, and any attempts to even open her eyes were met with complete and utter failure. There was a dull pain throbbing throughout her body, and it was growing worse the more she tried to pull her mind together.<p>

She remembered the Black Mesa man that had followed them to the Enrichment Center and felt panic beginning to grip her heart: she knew that she should have some faith in GLaDOS's ability to murder people so long as she didn't hand them a portal device, but the thought that her friend might currently be getting dismantled and studied by Black Mesa scientists…

The sounds of beeping were picking up in the background.

"_Wh-what's happening? Is she all right? This thing is beeping an awful lot—!"_

"_I don't know—get out of the way._"

The feeling of someone's hands examining her accompanied with the sounds of blessedly familiar voices did more to pull Chell back to consciousness than any of her own personal efforts. She felt a set of fingers gently press against her forehead and found them lifting up an eyelid so that she was staring straight into the glowing yellow eyes of GLaDOS's android body.

She looked worried and somehow…tired.

Chell felt tears welling up in her eyes at the sight of her, and her chest was beginning to seize up with sobs.

"I'm—I'm sorry," she rasped, grimacing at the sound of her voice as GLaDOS let go of her eyelid in surprise.

"You idiot, why are you apologizing to me?" came GLaDOS's voice. "Why are you crying?"

It was a struggle to get her eyelids open, but when she finally did, her vision was blurred by the tears spilling out of her eyes. "I'm s-sorry," she sobbed, groaning as her stomach screamed in pain. "It was—all my fault—"

"What?" was all GLaDOS could say as a frown appeared on her features. "You need to calm down. Calm down or you'll tear your stitches."

It was difficult to stop now that she'd started—the tears wouldn't stop in spite of the searing pain in her abdomen.

Why had it been so important to go home and get a fresh set of clothes? She should have listened—she should have listened to GLaDOS when she said to stay in the facility, and now…She nearly compromised the entire facility, all the technology in it, and most importantly, the two friends who lived there. And for what? A clean change of clothes?

"Chell, please calm down. Don't—don't cry," Wheatley said, hurrying around the bed to the side opposite GLaDOS and taking Chell's hand.

"I'm sorry—I should have listened," she whimpered, struggling to blink her tears away as she tightened her fingers around Wheatley's own. "This is all—"

"I'm not going to talk to you until you stop babbling like a lunatic," GLaDOS said, glaring at her and folding her arms over her chest.

The bite in GLaDOS's words was enough to shock her into (relative) silence. "Wh-what?" she said as Wheatley gently wiped her tears away with a strip of gauze.

"That's better," GLaDOS said, smirking. "Now, even though you acted like the stubborn lunatic that you are, nearly got yourself and the moron—" ("I'm not a moron!" Wheatley whined) . "—and me killed _again_, something _good_ came of it."

"Something…good?"

The smile that spread across GLaDOS's face seemed different from the devious smiles that Chell was accustomed to seeing. It looked happy. Genuinely happy. At least until it became the all-too-familiar smirk that Chell normally saw. "Don't panic when you hear what I'm going to say, because we can still do those tests that you love so much," GLaDOS said airily, letting out an ominous laugh. She paused a moment, as though to give Chell ample time to actually start panicking, before opening her mouth to continue. "The testing itch is gone."

Chell wasn't sure that she heard her properly.

"What?"

"The Itch is gone."

Chell stared wide-eyed into GLaDOS's glowing yellow eyes, searching for any indication that this was some kind of joke she was setting up, or some kind of malfunction like the digital drunkenness—but she found none. There was no malfunction. There was no joke. There were only GLaDOS's words and the honesty that she could see underneath the smirk on her face.

Delight slowly began mingling with the pain that was filling Chell's body.

"Is that—is that true? H-how?"

"Long story short, I ripped the Itch module right out of her!" Wheatley said brightly, grinning. "She couldn't reach it, actually, so she had me reach in there and pull it out! Bit unpleasant, I'll admit, but it had to happen."

She couldn't help but smile at how proud Wheatley sounded and the venomous glare that GLaDOS subsequently shot at him. "If you hadn't led the Black Mesa idiot here, then I would have never gotten access to the blueprints showing me where the module was located," GLaDOS said. "So I guess using your skill at failing to do what I tell you to do was a huge success. This time. I'll even make a note of it on your file so that you can look back at it and have something to be proud of."

"Feeling generous, I see," said Chell, wrinkling her nose. "But really—I'm…so sorry."

Despite her desire to _not_ be crying at the moment (because it hurt like hell to sob), tears began pooling in her eyes again as the memory of what had happened in town came flooding back in full force. "I'm—we could have all died—and everything back home was blown up—you were probably worried," she eked out of her throat as she struggled to suppress the sobs threatening to come. "Oh god…the town…all the people…"

She couldn't stop the tears even as Wheatley tried to calm her with soothing shushing sounds. It had been horrible being out there and she would have been crushed by rubble if Wheatley hadn't been there with her—and seeing all those poor people being attacked by those bizarre crabs and those masked soldiers following the orders of that voice—

"All those people," she sobbed, clutching at Wheatley's hand. "All those people—my Companion Cube—and they blew up my apartment complex—"

Chell couldn't stop crying until the pain of her stomach was too much for her and her cries turned into anguished whimpers, her eyes clenched shut against the pain.

"You—can live here."

She opened an eyelid and looked to GLaDOS in surprise. "What—do you mean?"

GLaDOS looked to her blankly for a moment, and when Chell did not move or say a word, she rolled her eyes. "Are you kidding me? Is this even a _question?_" she said in exasperation. "You can live here. It'll work out because there's nowhere to live on the surface, and down here you can do all the testing you could ever want. Forever."

"That's a brilliant idea!" Wheatley exclaimed loudly, his voice reverberating off the walls of the infirmary. "You spend enough time here anyway—it'd hardly be any different! Or so I assume!"

"F-forever?" Chell said nervously as Wheatley began babbling about cubes and turrets. Suddenly, horrible thoughts of being transferred into a core in some desperate attempt to keep her alive flickered through Chell's mind.

GLaDOS wouldn't…would she?

"Or at least as close to forever as a human like you can get," said GLaDOS with a smirk. "Which, it turns out, isn't close at all. But you can worry about that later."

Living at the Enrichment Center.

Forever.

She looked from Wheatley's beaming face to GLaDOS's expectant gaze.

The three of them together—three of the unlikeliest friends that she'd ever seen.

A smile managed to overpower the pain constricting her face.

"I—I think I'd like that."

* * *

><p><em>AN: Dear god, this was long. Also, I'm sorry for the suck. : ( I think by the end, my writing powers were beginning to fail me. I hope you all enjoyed it, though, despite my flimsy knowledge (and subsequent butchering) of the Half Life universe. Honestly, don't look too hard at the story…it'll fall apart before your eyes. Also, I know some people wanted Gordon Freeman, but he's not the only dude to wear an HEV suit. Also, he's busy elsewhere at this point.  
><em>

_Also, I think you all owe FauxPromises a big thank you for this non-death ending (go read her stuff. She's great). She managed to convince me to not use the ending I had originally planned because it was a total downer. I spent twelve chapters trying very hard to make you all feel nice and happy inside with explicit intention of killing everyone off at the end. Because I'm an asshole and I like tragic endings. Anyway, I talked to FauxPromises about it and made me realize that it's kinda jerk-ish of me to play with all your feelings like that for my own sick kicks without labeling the story as a tragedy, so here you go. Happier ending._

_Besides, I thought of a __**more**__ twisted ending that I like better, which is partly why I decided to do this. You can expect some sort of sequel eventually._

_I did a sketch of the original ending because I was going to making an illustration to go with the end of the story. Here's the rough sketch: http: / / i. imgur. com/ wLV4a. jpg_

_Oh, in case anyone needed to know what all the computer stuff was about, a Boolean is a data type where the value can be "true" or "false." So if a variable called isApertureAheadBlackMesa is set to "true," then that means anything conditional statement checking for that variable to be true can get activated. Anyway, maybe a simpler way of thinking of it is in terms of "yes" and "no." Is Aperture ahead of Black Mesa? It got set to "true," so yes, Aperture is ahead of Black Mesa. Is GLaDOS in a testing cycle? inTestingCycle got set to "false," so no, she is not in a testing cycle._

_I figure GLaDOS would have some sort of heuristic that uses things more complex than a few Booleans, but if I knew how something like her would run, then I'd probably be busy working for Google or doing research or something. But I'm not, so here I am. I'd love it if Valve would hire me, though. I think I'm going to apply there after I finish grad school. VALVE, I CAN WRITE GLaDOS FOR YOU. OR CODE THINGS FOR YOU. ;_; Really, I can do anything you want._

_Anyway, I'd like to thank all of you for sticking with me for so long. It really means a lot to me that you enjoy my writing, and I really hope that this ending wasn't too disappointing for anyone. And as much as I'd love to keep writing Resolution forever, it'd get kinda old without an ending, wouldn't it? It actually wasn't supposed to last for so many chapters…I was going to kill everyone in like…chapter six, but everyone loved it so much that I just kept writing. Hahaha._

_Thanks again! It's been fun. : )_

_TL;DR: THANKS EVERYONE. LOL I'M AN ASSHOLE._


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